


These Are The Days Of Our Lives

by rekishi



Series: Much Flailing About Time-displaced Super Soldiers [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Multiple, POV Tony Stark, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovered Memories, Thor Gets a Hug, Tony/Cybernetic Arm!OTP, Unfinished, Vigilantism, sane James "Bucky" Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 07:46:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12452814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rekishi/pseuds/rekishi
Summary: James should have known better than to expect the small life he had carved out for himself as a neighbourhood vigilante to go as it had been, even after reuniting with Steve Rogers aka Captain America. Because that would have been far too convenient.In which Steve finds his match in stubbornness, Thor is not as alone as he thought, and Tony Stark makes a surprisingly capable nurse.





	These Are The Days Of Our Lives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguewrld](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguewrld/gifts), [carmenta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmenta/gifts).



> I have been, no joke, trying to finish this fic for YEARS now. It's not that I've been jossed to hell, I wouldn't mind that. I even have a pretty decent plan on how to finish this. I just can't execute it (life, work).
> 
> But I also have some 43k words sitting and burning a whole into my Dropbox, so in the end I decided to get it out there and simply...let it sit. Give what's out there to you guys, and see if you like it. Or not. Still, I cleaned it up as much as it was feasible and here is it now.
> 
>  **This is your final warning though:** this fic is unfinished and will remain unfinished. Read at your own risk!

On principle, Tony Stark knew how everything worked that left Stark Industries manufacturing plants. He couldn't care much less about the everyday running of the company, that's why Pepper was CEO, but machines were interesting. When SI had still made weapons, the very fact that he knew them inside and out, had even designed most of them, had saved his life during his Afghanistan soirée. 

Tony understood machines. He knew how they worked. It was where the organic component came in that matters started to be fuzzy around the edges and the reason the circuits in Barnes' shoulder had him stumped. It was beyond time to bring in Bruce, and while he'd told Barnes he should take the days to decide on what he wanted to do, the fried connections where the nerves fed into the circuits looked bad. So far, they'd kept their interactions firmly on Barnes' terms, but Tony knew the man would need pushing here.

He knocked at the lab door, entered his code and walked in. "Coffee?" he asked Bruce, who was filling a cuvette with a clear liquid before adding object slides. Staining brain slices. Yum.

"Sure, these go in the incubator for a few hours now." Bruce followed him out, making sure the door was shut before catching up to him. "What do you want to talk about?"

Tony couldn't help but smirk, but shook his head. "I'll show you, just wait."

It was the perfect day to do this; Steve was out being Captain America somewhere, Natasha and Clint were running some sort of errand for Coulson, and Wilson was at the VA and would only come back in a few hours. Thor had gone back to Asgard after his disagreement with Steve it was probably for the best that those two weren't in the same place right now. 

"JARVIS, bring up the arm," Tony said on the common floor with his mug firmly in hand.

"Sir," JARVIS responded and the hologram of the arm appeared, then the shoulder part magnified with a gesture. 

Bruce stepped up, took a sip of coffee and squinted at the display. "Is this one of the prototypes?"

SI had taken a very drastic turn towards clean energy and medical bionics after Tony had taken it off the weapons market, but he usually didn't get Bruce to consult. The man wasn't that kind of doctor, as he liked to point out. 

"Sort of," Tony answered and zoomed in on a circuit he knew to be damaged by overload. "What do you make of that?"

"I guess this would not be very comfortable," Bruce ventured. "You never told me it was quite this sophisticated already."

"They're not." The suits had merely been the stepping stone for the bionic research they were doing, but prosthetics generally had different requirements. Where suits fed off of commands from the outside of the body within them (or JARVIS), medical prosthetics needed to react to those from the inside. The suits needed to be able to resist weapons fire, the worst that would happen to medical prosthetics were water, dust and crush damage. They were making good progress, but some elements were still missing. "This is the arm HYDRA attached to the Winter Soldier."

"And you were able to piece this much together from the files, damage and all?"

Tony shook his head. "This is a scan from two months ago."

That was enough to make Bruce turn around and stare at him. "Tony."

Raising both hands, Tony shook his head again. "He's fine. He's lucid, he looks clean, he eats, drinks, he doesn't want to talk to Steve. I can hardly force him. He came because he needed help with the arm, he was pretty insistent about no one else knowing he was here."

To be honest, he'd scared the living shit out of Tony the first time he'd been at the Tower, but in truth Barnes was surprisingly approachable. Tony would have gone against the man's demands about privacy, if necessary; if he'd seemed to not be taking care of himself, were a danger to himself, but James Barnes seemed to be coping. Well, aside from avoiding Steve at all costs for no good reason. Tony had some theories in regards to that.

A frown creased Bruce's forehead, but he seemed to understand and enlarged the hologram even more. "This needs replacing or he's seriously going to hurt at some point."

"I suggested that." Tony relayed some of what he'd learned of the technology in the meantime and how he had managed to replace some broken parts already. "But if I yank out his nerves he might punch me in the face with that beauty," he concluded. "I'd like to avoid that, I imagine it packs quite a punch."

Bruce made a noise of acknowledgment and traced circuits from where the nerves fed into the electronics. From the scans JARVIS had taken it was obvious that there was more of Barnes' actual arm left than all that plating seemed to suggest. Neither of them could determine whether that was a good development, because after decades encased by metal, what was left of the muscles had probably atrophied beyond saving and Bruce thought the skin might come off in flakes from oxygen deprivation.

"This is sophisticated as hell," Bruce finally said, shaking his head in disbelief. "The military had some amazing stuff when we were working on the Enhancement Project, but nothing that even compares to this."

"Yep, and that's probably why they only thawed him out for special missions. The forces that work in this are insane, I'm surprised stuff doesn't break down more often."

"Mystery alloy?"

"Hardened titanium alloy with steel components. I suspect it's coated in a knock-off version of vibranium, it's too easily damaged for the true stuff, but I need more than a few molecules for a proper analysis and HYDRA is unsurprisingly mum on the topic." He highlighted one particular connection that he though needed work first, because if even Tony's semi-trained eye could see the damage it had to be substantial. Pain tolerance had probably been drilled into Barnes and whatever they'd injected him with did its own part, but it still was considerable.

He brought up the schematic of the inlay he'd constructed and showed to Barnes, pushed it into the fried connection. "How good's your neurosurgery?"

"I'm not sure it's even possible to remove anything here without damaging the junction, synapses are incredibly tricky. It could incapacitate the whole arm. It depends on how his healing capabilities are, we know the mechanisms of nerve regeneration and axon regrowth, but even Steve probably can't compensate for everything." Bruce gently lifted the synapses off the broken piece, the schematic looked like elongated frog fingers clutching at the metal. The replacement slotted in perfectly, as expected. "We'd need to know if he can regrow those connection before we do anything."

"How do we find out?" He didn't mention the fresh scar he'd noticed on Barnes the first time he'd let him open the arm, the one had been gone completely two visits later.

"Really?" Bruce looked at him, took his glasses off. "By cutting them off and trying it."

"That might not be ideal, he's quite protective of that arm." Tony touched the nerve and it lit up in all its arboritic complexity.

Bruce smirked. "You don't say. How is he?"

For a moment, Tony considered intentionally misunderstanding, but Bruce knew him too well by now, and like with Rhodey and Pepper, he had no hope to get away with that. "I like him."

"That's quite the compliment, coming from you." That was another fact about Bruce Banner: he knew far too well where to put the lever.

In the moment Bruce made to say something else, the elevator doors wooshed open and a voice said, "Steve, if you keep touching me, I swear!"

Tony knew that voice. He clapped his hands together and closed the hologram before snatching his mug of cold coffee up again. "By all means," he drawled, "tell us all about how you're going to have you wicked way with him and don't leave out any of the details."

From the corner of his eye he saw Bruce raise an eyebrow, both at the unfamiliar voice as well as his reaction. Tony could already see the two time-displaced super soldiers though, and Steve looked fairly startled, rooted to the spot for a second before setting his jaw and grabbing Barnes' arm. Whether it was to effectively cut off his escape route (as if Barnes couldn't jump through the window if he wanted, shooting his way out with the guns indubitably hidden on his person) or make a statement to everyone else remained questionable. Probably also to Barnes, who threw a slightly annoyed but indulgent look at Steve and let himself be sort-of-led-sort-of-dragged forward. By the metal arm. 

"Tony," Steve greeted him mulishly. Bruce got half a smile. "Bruce. Buck—"

"Stark," Barnes acknowledged him with a nod. "Dr. Banner."

"He's 'Dr.' and I only get my last name? I also have doctoral degree, you know. More than one!" Maybe he should look into neurosurgery, just to spite them all. He had all this spare time now that he only cat-napped every couple of days. 

Barnes smirked. "I know, it's in your file."

He looked … different today. Maybe it was the nice maroon colored t-shirt he wore instead of his Dark Shadow getup, but while the man had always been lucid and well-articulated, he seemed more at ease in his skin now. Tony doubted it was just the physical proximity to Steve doing that. 

"It's nice to finally meet you," Bruce said and clearly struggled not to extend his hand. The man was cultured and well-raised, but they'd all seen enough of each other over the past months to know that even something deeply ingrained in almost everyone might not be appreciated. Tony would know, Bruce had been the one to talk him out of a late night panic attack after three insomniac nights. 

"Bucky?" Steve asked, eyes narrowed in slight confusion at their familiarity. 

"Steve, I told you—"

"You said you told him you slept with Howard! I thought you were making a joke!"

Tony turned to Bruce who was even more confused than Steve had been a moment ago. "He didn't. My dad preferred the company of machines over that of people." He could see an unkind remark about fathers and sons burning behind Steve's eyes, but he spared them all the verbal sparring match that would have brought about. "Well, as long as he didn't have a hand in shaping them anyway, so Bucky certainly was off his radar. My mom kissed Steve though!"

"You told him that?!" Steve sounded incredulous as he turned around to his friend and Barnes rolled his eyes. "When did that even come up?"

"It's not a state secret. More than half the SSR tried to get into your pants at some point." The shrug he gave was almost dismissive.

"Including you?" Tony inquired. "Or was that not necessary anymore?" 

He'd long suspected that Steve had harbored more feelings for Bucky Barnes than he let on; even considering time displacement and the way he'd lost his friend did not account for the amount of pining Steve had done since the clusterfuck in DC. 

Tony had tried to contact him after Fury was declared dead, him and Natasha and Clint, but to no avail. By the time he had gotten Steve on the phone everything was said and done, Maria Hill had asked for a job at SI and Steve was obsessing over a dead assassin. 

Even Wilson—who was a curious guy, the way he had been willing to throw his well-ordered life overboard, ever the soldier—hadn't been able to explain it fully. Of course, Tony had known about Bucky Barnes; he'd been one of the group of insane men who'd followed Steve all across Europe and even before that he'd been Steve Rogers' best guy. Steve hadn't talked much to Tony on the phone, just said he needed to find him and from then on whenever Tony tried to convince him to come to New York, see if some intel would pop up, his only topic had been Bucky Barnes. It really had been that obvious. 

"That's none of your business, Tony," Steve interjected heatedly and stepped forward.

"Curious minds want to know! Do you even know how much they redacted from your file? And you know his was completely destroyed and you can be damn sure that it wasn't an accident!" He'd looked into it. Too much coincidence was just too much.

Steve narrowed his eyes. "And what does that matter, he's here now and that's all that counts, isn't it? We don't need to fill in the blanks."

"The hell we do, can you even imagine what else might be out there that even HYDRA erased from their files?" Tony swept his hand through the room, stepped forward to be able to get into Steve's face. "What do you think is the reason that for fifty years your boy here was a ghost, well hidden even from their own? That doesn't even account for the things we don't yet know about!"

"I didn't come here so you could—" Steve didn't get to finish before Tony interrupted him.

"No, you came back here, because—"

The shrill sound of a whistle sounded and both of them had to cover their ears, Tony screwed his eyes shut for a second. When he looked back, Barnes and Bruce were exchanging a calm look and Bruce shrugged.

"Thank you, JARVIS," Barnes said in a falsely pleasant tone. 

JARVIS—who was a traitor and strangely fond of Barnes—answered, "You're welcome, Sergeant."

Barnes sighed and pulled Steve back by one shoulder. The fact that Steve let himself be pulled back would have spoken volumes about the level of this relationship if Tony hadn't already known. What Tony hadn't expected—and neither had Steve to judge by the noise of surprise that escaped him—was Barnes pulling his friend down with a hand in the back of his neck and planting a close mouthed, lightning fast but hard kiss on his lips. Damn, but the man had reflexes.

An assessment that was confirmed when he let go of Steve and very calmly turned back to Tony and Bruce. Steve meanwhile looked mildly flabbergasted and a lot like he wanted Barnes to do it again. Often. With more tongue. Which was an image Tony had to wrench himself away from if he ever wanted another chance at sleep. 

"Does that answer your question?" he asked.

Tony pulled a face that he knew conveyed wry amusement as well as indifference and shrugged. "Sort of."

"Good. So Doc, I'd guess someone who turns green and violent when his emotions run hot would know, is there a decent cup of coffee to be had in this place?" Barnes asked and stepped up to Bruce, easily pulling him into a conversation about the relative value of caffeinated beverages. 

A moment later Captain America—in uniform and everything, patriotic to the hilt—stepped past Tony, shooting him a glare. It was such a spectacular turn from the way he'd just looked at Barnes that it almost made Tony laugh. Truly, the only response this warranted was for him to roll his eyes and follow the others deeper into the kitchen. If he was perfectly honest, it wasn't bad to have more than one or two people on this otherwise deserted floor. Everyone who lived in the Tower kept odd hours, and none of them were the most social when it really came down to it.

"JARVIS, keep the exists clear." These two might have known each their whole lives, but Tony wouldn't put it past Steve to have unrealistic expectations. The other factor was that no one really knew what Barnes was doing when he wasn't vigilanting through Brooklyn or interceding in Avengers business and whether three people already constituted a crowd for him and how he handled them. Better to be on the safe side.

"Certainly, Sir."

Tony walked past Barnes with intentional casualness to get another cup of coffee for himself and looked at the scene. Unsurprisingly, Steve was trying to stand as close to his friend as he dared with all of Wilson's warnings about psychological trauma and physical reactions to it in mind, Bruce simply seemed to go with the situation and eyed the arm, while Barnes took it all in with the sort of grim amusement Tony had seen on him before. At least he didn't seem tense, which was probably all any of them could ask for.

"So this was your call this morning," Tony said to Steve with feigned disinterest.

Barnes raised a sardonic eyebrow. "That was probably to say he was taking care of the blasphemic act I committed last night."

"Pardon?"

"You don't really watch the news, do you?" Barnes said and dug in his pocket for his phone. When he unlocked it Steve's eyes bugged a bit and Tony felt deeply satisfied that Steve was reeling at the sheer depth of their interaction. No matter that they usually got along, it was still immensely pleasing to throw Cap for a loop. Barnes held out his phone to show a picture of a white flag on top of what looked like one of the Brooklyn Bridge towers. "I thought that would get his attention."

With a somewhat amused smile Bruce stepped closer and squinted through his glasses to read the blurb under the picture of a white flag on Brooklyn Bridge. "I'd say that worked out in your favor."

Barnes shrugged and put the phone away, took a sip of his coffee. "So I guess you have questions." He shot a sharp look at Tony when he took a breath. "Watch your mouth."

As threats went, it shouldn't have been one but it very effectively made Tony reconsider and let Bruce go first.

"Is anyone still after you?" Bruce asked and short of any medical curiosity, that really was the most logical thing to ask. Tony wondered whether he should have inquired about that months ago, but then Barnes had never seemed harried or overly worried and Tony _had_ offered the protection that the Tower afforded. In the end, Barnes could probably take care of himself, though, the scar that had vanished from his back in the meantime was testament enough to that. 

The man started to shake his head, then reconsidered. "I don't know. If they knew where I was they might try to bring me in, but I suppose they're trying to salvage what they can. The last guy who gutted me paid for it with his life."

"Buck," Steve said quietly and Barnes shot him an unapologetic glance that made it clear enough he wasn't going to discuss ways or means. Interesting. 

"If you'll be joining missions we should probably get you on our coms, JARVIS will make sure you get clearance," Tony interrupted that particular bit of loaded silence. He saw Barnes frown. "If you agree."

The frown turned skeptical. "I work better alone. I've only had backup for supply and collateral."

"That's not true, Buck, and you know it." Steve seemed insistent on bringing his friend into the fold, completely ignoring whether the man even wanted that. Wanting Steve was one issue, wanting to help Steve with what he decided to risk his life for another; but being willing to accept being part of such a volatile team such as theirs was a can of worms not everyone would want to open. Not to mention the last time he'd had a team behind him, he'd tried to kill Natasha and Steve.

A look at Bruce confirmed he had gotten on that particular train of thought as well.

"Maybe we can make that decision when it's actually time to make it, which is not right now," Tony cut into the discussion before it could become one. "And Steve, please remember your decision to go off and storm a HYDRA base wasn't a matter of clearing it with your team, neither seventy years ago nor two weeks ago."

Smug was probably the best description for the expression Barnes turned towards his friend, at which Steve first flushed and then frowned. The whole repertoire of nonverbal communication these two were exhibiting after mere hours of being reunited was probably analysis gold for Bruce, but before Tony could say anything he heard Pepper's voice.

"Tony, are you down here?" The quick sound of heels on the floor sounded and then she was already rounding the corner, paperwork in her hand and head down. "I was looking for you, didn't you-" She cut herself off when she raised her eyes and her gaze fell on Barnes, who gave her a smile. He might have fooled a lot of people, but Pepper had spent the last few years with too many potentially deadly people not to recognize a ready stance. Tony could see the way she took the man in, recognition at the arm flashing in her gaze and then she set the paperwork down on the counter.

"Sergeant Barnes, it's nice to finally meet you. I take it the upheaval in the city was courtesy of you?" Of course, Pepper would watch the news. 

"Ma'am-"

"Oh, don't you Ma'am me," she chided and got a grin for her efforts. It had always been said Bucky Barnes had been a charmer, and Tony could see it even beneath all the layers of military conditioning and years of brainwashing. "Pepper Potts."

"Miss Potts, it's a pleasure." He shook her hand and let his fingers linger just a moment too long, winked at Tony—which really, was more funny than threatening—before jumping and turning so fast it would have made Tony dizzy. Steve frowned even deeper than before, having elbowed his friend into the ribs. "A lady deserves appreciation, Steve," Barnes informed him, taking down his left hand from the fighting position and the right away from his hovering near his hip with slow deliberation. 

Pepper—bless her heart—cleared her throat delicately and turned to Tony after also greeting Bruce. "I need you to do an interview."

"There's reasons I made you CEO, you know? One of them was so I wouldn't have to do these kinds of things anymore." PR was a necessary evil as the son of Howard Stark, but everything had quieted down considerably since he'd foisted the company off on Pepper. It was so much easier.

She raised an eyebrow. "You were also dying at the time. You hold controlling majority of the shares, you claimed to have privatized world peace, yours is the face they need to associate with clean energy. No questions about the Avengers, that's prearranged."

Only few people knew how hard it had been for Tony to come back to New York after the events of the battle against the Chitauri, and even with Pepper Tony had hesitated for a long time. But in the end, he needed to face his demons and after he didn't have a home in Malibu anymore, this had seemed the best decision. When Steve ended up in the hospital after the SHIELD clusterfuck in DC, that only affirmed it. 

He sighed. "Fine."

A sweetly-false smile appeared on her face. "Details are already in your schedule," she informed him and leaned in to kiss his cheek, then turned around to the two super soldiers. Barnes was nodding at something that Bruce said, which Steve didn't seem to like because he kept drawing in breath but didn't actually interrupt. "Will you be staying with us as well, Sergeant?"

"Yes," Steve said.

"No," Barnes said in the same moment and the tension between them was almost palpable in that moment. "Steve, no. That's not going to work. I'm not- I have a place to stay."

He said it in the kindest tone possible that still allowed for his determination to come through, yet it broke Steve's heart. Pepper put a hand on Tony's lower arm to still him, but it wouldn't have been necessary; Tony didn't make a habit of kicking people who were already down. Well, not anymore. 

It was Bruce who finally broke the ensuing silence with his customary sensibility, "Steve, give it time."

Barnes stepped forward and reached out with his good hand to rest it against the side of Steve's neck, thumb stroking exactly once over his cheekbone. When Steve raised his glance away from the floor, his friend smiled at him. It wasn't a moment made for an audience. 

"We'll talk about it later, all right?" Steve nodded and Barnes let his hand drop away before taking half a second to collect himself and turning to Bruce. "Okay Doc, let's get you your blood sample. I promise I'll try not to gut you."

"I'm sure the other guy would have something to say about that," Bruce answered and led the way to the lab. 

After a few steps, Barnes turned back around. "Oh, Miss Potts, if I may ask a favor?"

Pepper smiled. "I'll try my best."

"The Army had me marked as MIA, and I know Howard and Peggy had me declared dead and my remains as non-recoverable in '47. Would it be possible to, I'm not sure, declare myself undead, preferably without being court martialed for treason?"

Tony grinned. "You just have to go anywhere and demand brains!"

Pepper swatted at him, then nodded at Barnes. "I'll see what I can do, but I think that should be possible."

"Thank you," he said and gave Tony a lopsided smile, then turned to Steve. "You coming?"

It was half past four in the morning when the door to Tony's workroom opened and Steve stepped in, dressed in sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Tony had shared dinner with Pepper, telling her all about Barnes that he hadn't before, laying it all out for her. She'd taken it with the same grace she had all of his other revelations of the past fifteen years, so he wasn't too worried about it being too much for her. Then he'd power napped while Pepper had her feet in his lap and when she'd gone to bed, he'd come down.

Seeing Steve there was exceedingly rare and most times required Tony to explicitly ask for it—or Wilson to drag him along. 

"Capsicle," Tony acknowledged. It had turned into his favorite nickname over the last months and Steve was immune to it by now. When his shoulders fell, Tony directed him to the stool that Barnes usually occupied so he would be out of the way and got him a beer. "He's not here."

"I thought—" Steve cut himself off. Apparently Barnes had taken off after giving Bruce a sample of his blood without so much as a promise to visit again. Tony had no doubt that he would, but that probably wasn't even the point. After opening the bottle with the flat of a screwdriver, Steve took a large gulp.

Tony resumed soldering the circuit he'd been working on before the man came in; it was a smaller, lighter variant of a part of the suits' weapons systems he wanted to test as soon as possible. "He only comes when he needs something, since I don't think Bruce tried to take blood from the metal arm, I don't think you're in luck."

It took a while for Steve to answer. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"He asked me not to." Threatened. Two sides of the same coin, really.

"Why?" 

Obviously, that was the part that didn't get through Steve's thick as cement skull. Sighing, Tony tried a different approach. "Why did he agree to come here with you?"

"I thought he could meet the others." The mulish expression was back, but this time Steve had come by his own volition and whatever Tony might think, Steve had never been shy about voicing his opinions.

He shook his head. "You thought then everything would be dandy and he'd come back to you and we could all avenge together all the time. When has your life ever been that uncomplicated? That's not how it works, Steve, you should have known that when he left you on the shore."

Chewing on that, Steve took another sip of beer, stalling for time. "I'm worried about him."

"He's a big boy who can take care of himself. He's one of the most deadly assassins on the planet, and I'm including Natasha on that list, because she could kill me with her eyebrows. You've seen him; he eats, he's lucid, do you really want to take that away from him?" Growing up and even as an adult after meeting Steve, never would Tony have thought he would one day argue on behalf of Bucky Barnes. 

"I don't want to take anything away from him," Steve said, "I just want him—"

"Where you can see him. It's not how it works." 

Tony—he could admit that to himself and maybe to Pepper, because Pepper knew it anyway—had discovered pretty late about giving a fuck. In his childhood he'd been a prodigy growing up at boarding school, fawned over by teachers, schmoozed up to by rich brats, ignored by his parents. After being orphaned he'd been swarmed by less wholesome individuals, ready to exploit his youth for their own means. A ploy that had been doomed to fail not because Tony was too smart for them (he was), but because he simply hadn't cared. He'd drifted for a long time, accepting the company of people he didn't _have to_ tolerate only when they could keep up with him (Pepper, Rhodey), but living a life as contrary as possible.

Funny how three months in an Afghan cave could be this cathartic.

Now Tony was looking at Steve Rogers, who pined for a man lost and found yet still unavailable and couldn't muster the kindness probably expected of him. But Steve should know him better than that. It had taken a lot of time and cold reasoning to convince Steve to make his base in the Tower, but they'd known since Loki that they could work together if push came to shove. That was more likely now than ever.

The wistful look on Steve's face was an expression Tony would have liked to ban from the workshop. "He has a place here, though."

Not a question, and maybe Tony should point out whose name was out front but that would have been petty. He merely shrugged and neither of them said anything from there on and at some point, Steve vanished to do what super soldiers did at almost six in the morning.

On his way up later to have breakfast with Pepper, Tony met Wilson in the elevator, sweaty and in running clothes, which clued him in where Steve ended up earlier. "Still not keeping up with that stick in the mud?"

Sam rolled his eyes behind his water bottle. "What do you think?"

"I think it's time we made you the All American Eagle again," Tony answered. "You know about Cap's metallic friend?"

"Bucky? Yeah, Steve told me. Have you really been keeping them from each other?" The glance Sam shot him was skeptical at best.

Tony rolled the idea in his head for a moment. "No. Barnes wanted space and I didn't see how I could deny that to a world renowned assassin."

In that moment the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened on Sam's floor. "Fair enough," the man said and stepped off.

Once alone, Tony shook his head at the menagerie currently living on and off in the Tower. Wilson had come as a package deal with Steve and might even have been a driving force behind him finally making the jump. Pepper had told Tony one evening how lost she thought Steve felt in a city that had been his own once, after the events of the last years. He'd brushed her off, said Steve was the type to always fall on his feet out of sheer obstinacy and she'd given him that look, the one that said he could never fool her. 

He knew he was lucky to have her in his life, but seeing Steve in the lab waiting for someone who never showed also made it obvious how fleeting that could be. Much more than that two hundred feet drop into a burning oil tanker had suggested.

***

Over seventy odd years later, James still wasn't used to Steve being so fucking tall—taller than him. When they had been young, he'd been able to pull Steve against him and hide him completely, now it was Steve who had to bend down for them to be level.

He pondered that while he leaned on the parapet of the roof opposite the house Charles lived in, waiting for the light to go out in his window. Time had long stopped being relevant for James and had not resumed its proper pace since he'd stood in front of the Smithsonian display for the first time. He didn't know how long he'd cradled Steve's head against the crook of his neck that morning, answering the same questions over and over; yes he was real, he was here, he remembered. 

Someone had coached Steve what to do if he ever found the Winter Solider turned real boy apparently, because he moved slowly and showed his hands and obviously had done his best not to reach out at first, and after that first rush of emotions. It was strange, how clearly scared Steve was of doing something wrong, because that had never been anything typically _Steve_. The way he treated James like an uncooked egg grated on his nerves when he didn't even know himself how to go about it. When he'd finally pulled Steve in to press their mouths together it had been the most awkward kiss they'd ever had, and that was saying something, considering that time in the freezing attic.

The lights in Charles' window shut off and James got up to stretch. He should have known Steve would want him to stay. They'd talked about the Morlocks in Central Park and James had teased him about what had happened with the protection racket, a development Steve had predictably not been happy about. Agent Carter was apparently still alive but fading, transferred to a nursing facility in New York. And still Steve remained so fucking careful; James had thought maybe if he saw James interact with other people—most specifically Tony—it would help, which was why he had agreed to come to the Tower. He'd never intended to stay, yet all he had achieved was to confuse Steve and hurt him even more by leaving. 

A few blocks, mere minutes on the rooftops, brought him to the part of the neighborhood where a lot of the drug trafficking happened. Many street corners had someone selling, but in this place the frequency was a bit higher than elsewhere. He slipped down from a roof via the landings of the fire escapes and approached one of them with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. 

Sniffing, he looked around as if to ensure himself no one was around. They were away from the cone of the flickering streetlight, but James saw enough.

"I have what you need, bro," the guy said, not a New York accent. 

"Yeah?" he asked. "I got something for you, too."

Without much ceremony he rammed his cybernetic fist into the guy's solar plexus and he was out with a quiet "Ooph." James rolled his shoulders and dragged him around the corner into an alley where he bound his hands up with some discarded plastic bags. He could throw him into the next police station and then be on his way. 

The next day he was picking out a chocolate bar at the super market when he felt someone next to him. As far as locations went the supermarket ranked rather low on his threat assessment, he wasn't too worried about smoke grenades or ambushes. Still, he should have noticed someone he knew coming up to him, so while he was happy to see it was Dorothy, he was a tad dismayed, too. 

"James, I haven't seen you in a while," she said and took the chocolate from his hands while handing him another one. "You'll like that better, trust an old lady."

He noticed that one of her fingers was incapable of uncurling fully. 

"I've been out of town on a personal matter," he answered and scanned the ingredients list for things he could actually identify. "Since I've been back I've tried to clear up some things with St- my best friend."

"Trying to make up for the altercation from the other time?" she asked as he gently urged her along. He didn't want her to stand for too long if he didn't have anything more to pick out than chocolate and apples. He was still eating hot food at diners. 

He flushed. "Not really, that was … incidental. I wasn't doing so well for a while and now, I think he doesn't believe I'm okay."

"Are you?"

Dorothy had always known how to be kind to him and he didn't want to just brush her off, so he did give that some thought. "As much as I'll ever be," he eventually answered. "He has no reason to be acting like an overbearing mother hen."

"I'm trying to picture that," she mused and he gave her a confused look. "Nothing, I'm sorry. Maybe you should just sit him down and tell him how you see it?"

"You don't know him, he only believes what he wants to believe, no matter what my opinion on this is," he grumbled and remembered Steve insisting he was doing what was right, picking fights with people bigger than him. Truly, he should have known from the start that his friend would take on the biggest, most time-enduring enemy he could once he made it to the front.

Dorothy chuckled. "I'm sure you'll work it out. Would you hand me that package of tea up there? Thank you."

"I guess we'll have to." 

It was them, of course they'd work it out. The question was how long it would take, because try as he might, he couldn't remember if they'd ever been in this sort of situation, let alone how they had solved it. He'd thought, back in those barracks rooms and hay lofts and bombed out buildings and trying to get comfortable for the night, that if truly they ever did figure it out that the process would be easier. Right now, it was just a long list of frustrations which was only topped by Steve's hair trigger behavior. 

"You sound well matched in stubbornness," she chided softly as they waited at the checkout. "It's the first time I see you without your blue sweater. I have to say, I like it better than all that black."

He smiled as he took her bags to carry them outside. "Noted," he answered and offered to take her home, but she declined and took her shopping from him. "I'll see you soon," he promised before she went the other way. 

The air was humid a few days later, almost to the point of being oppressing. For some reason the river-usually almost odorless—had an especially pervasive smell that day and James considered making a trip to Manhattan just to get a different air current into his nose. He'd been busy the last few days, heat made people crazy and the petty crime rate had gone up considerably, the Dark Shadow had his work cut out for him.

The door to the roof opened in same moment as a seagull pounced a pigeon a few yards away from him and flew off with its price. 

"That's sorta gross," Charles said and wrinkled his nose, letting the door fall close behind him. 

"Circle of life," James commented and crossed his arms; probably he shouldn't tell the boy that more than once he'd eaten pigeon, although those had probably been slightly less diseased than this variety. "What are you even doing up here?"

The boy held up a book, one of those teen dystopias that were popular these days and James was almost sure he wasn't actually old enough for that yet. "It's this or crack a hydrant and with the Dark Shadow hanging around, the other kids are afraid. Thanks for that, by the way. And you're lucky my mom bought me the Lion King."

James didn't catch the reference, he'd need to look that up later. Instead he watched as Charles came over and hopped on the parapet, sitting cross legged and precariously balanced for a second, then finding a comfortable posture. "You know, then."

"Not stupid," Charles answered with an expression that told James the boy wondered if maybe James was. "I'm also pretty sure your name is not Steve."

A slight breeze hit them in that moment, sending a pleasant chill over James' skin. For a moment, he longed for Tony's climate controlled workshop. He'd not been back to the Tower since Steve had taken him; he'd occupied himself with other matters and while bouncing banter off of Tony was sort of fun, the Tower was not the place for him right now. Or maybe it was too much a place for him.

"I'm not going to argue with you," James said and Charles stuck out his tongue. 

After that a comfortable silence spread between them. James wasn't actually surprised that Charles knew he'd been hanging around the building, not after their last talk on the steps, but he hadn't expected the boy to seek him out. Because it helped him to think, James took out a knife and started flipping it, letting it wander through his hand; it was a weapon for his right, infinitesimally faster than his cybernetic arm—due to the translation of flesh to machine, so Tony said—his left reserved for defense. Now with his hands occupied, he turned his thoughts back to Stark Tower, to Steve, the war, the books he'd read since coming back to himself. So many prisoners of war had returned, often worse for wear, and nothing seemed to have changed in the subsequent wars fought on foreign soil.

Charles' eyes wandered away from his book until he stared at James hand outright.

"Could I do it?" he asked eventually.

James stopped, held the knife by the hilt. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because this is a weapon and weapons don't belong in the hands of children." Charles looked at him, then at the streets below them. James remembered too many child soldiers he'd seen in the Red Room in adjacent chambers, trained to deadly precision, those of them not performing well enough sent to be killed. "Well, they shouldn't."

A small pout appeared on the kid's face, and James remembered how young he really was. "It looks cool, though."

"I'm not putting a knife in your hand," James affirmed once more and put his back into its sheath. Something occurred to him. "I'll teach you self-defense, if you want."

Lifting his shirt to fan some air beneath it, Charles said with a grimace, "Maybe when it's not so hot."

James shrugged, fell silent again as the boy went back to his book. The rooftops around them were empty and James wondered distantly whether Pepper Potts—arguably the most capable woman he'd met since that German girl in that burned out village who'd walloped him because she thought he wanted to take her cow away from her—had managed to get anywhere with his paperwork. A trip across the river was probably in order sometime soon.

"I guess I should say thank you," Charles added quietly after a while. When James raised an eyebrow at him, the boy sighed. "They said we could stay. After last time."

"Do I look like I can afford a building?" James asked and looked down at the clothes he'd been wearing for two days and that had been washed from black to a dark gray by now.

Charles narrowed his eyes. "I think you're strange and know people. None other but a strange person would sit in this heat in a winter hoodie."

"Flawless logic," James added and smirked. It was a good thing Stark Industries didn't send representatives to their pro bono projects, because Charles would not even be shy about accosting Tony. 

The boy frowned at him and went back to his book, exposing as much of his skin as he could to the lightly moving air. James flicked crumbs at the sparrows hopping around them. He'd been so busy in the last few months, trying to force himself to remember and failing to, remembering events he didn't want to but also those more welcome. Now he had too much time on his hands. He'd spent so much of it avoiding Steve and even thinking about him except on tangents, and now that he could he still didn't have a clue how to proceed. He wasn't strictly speaking avoiding Steve now, except that he was.

Or had been for the past few days, because in that moment Charles said, "Hey, is that Captain America?"

James was sure he probably should have been surprised, but he really wasn't. Instead, he stretched over the parapet and peered down. Steve was indeed standing on the other side of the street, peering at the building. Only Tony could have told him, and James should have known that that piece of information was fair game now that the cat was out of the proverbial bag. 

"No," he said with a sigh and gathered his feet under himself from where he'd been sprawling, "that's Steve. You stay here and don't fall off."

"You know Captain America?" Charles' mouth stood open and James winked at him.

"Strange people, remember?" With that he took off and jumped to the next building and down from there, landing a few feet away from his friend to not put him in a fighting stance. They'd had enough of standing on opposite sides of the divide to last them a lifetime. 

"Careful, someone might consider you a stalker," he warned and Steve looked at him with a bright smile.

"It's what you get for running off without a word. I had to bribe it out of Tony." Steve was still so fucking careful, not even trying to reach out until James rolled his eyes and pulled the man into an embrace. 

It felt good. Like this was how it should be and James breathed him in before stepping away, letting his hand linger against his friend's side for a moment. "Tony has everything, he was doing you a favor."

"Maybe," Steve answered, reaching out and running fingers through James' hair. That shouldn't feel as good as it did, but James didn't question it. "Why this place? Do you live here?"

"No, I don't. My little bit of human interest does, though." He said it in as dry a tone as he could manage and Steve shot him a sideways glance, gauging how serious he really was. "It's a long story."

"I bet. Can we talk?"

Three guesses what this was about, James was almost sure he would need only one. He nodded at a black man their age—their biological age anyway—standing towards the end of the street, watching them. Sam Wilson, codename Falcon. "Is he joining us?"

Steve shook his head. "No. He just … wanted to make sure I wasn't chasing a ghost."

"Seventy years on ice haven't improved your jokes, you know?" Steve's laugh was familiar and it made James grin, feeling at ease. Several stories above them, he saw Charles' head retreat from the parapet. 

They got iced tea and walked the streets; this hadn't been their old neighborhood, so there were fewer traps of the past. James had not intentionally avoided areas he knew from before the war when he'd first come to New York, but now he was glad it had turned out that way. 

"I'm still not moving into the Tower," James opened, because he didn't want Steve to get his hopes up and steer clear of that particular topic.

Steve shot him a glance that was easy to read as disappointment and if Captain America was disappointed with you, it was serious. Good thing James had ample practice resisting the urge to give in to that. "I don't see why not, if you're around anyway."

Frowning, James looked at his friend. "I haven't been there since you took me, and the last time before that was to talk to Tony during that thunderstorm."

That Steve had been responsible for, kind of. Right. No wonder he looked slightly uncomfortable and confused, but then he apparently decided to change the topic. "Sam says if you got a few sessions with a counselor-"

"I what, would change my mind? Turn into an obedient pet assassin who happily follows you on missions? That's bullshit, Steve." The question wasn't even if James wanted to go on mission with the rest of that team, scattered as they were on a regular basis. For all intents and purposes, the Avengers were needed when the situation was truly dire, not for any run of the mill issue that the police or the military was better suited to handle. As far as James could tell the Tower acted as a base for most of them, but only Tony and Bruce—and now Steve—were there with any sort of predictability.

Steve, of course, would have none of it and the way his knuckles turned white around his paper cup without crushing it said a lot about his inner turmoil. "Buck, I do think talking to someone would help, why don't you try it? The way you refuse doesn't speak for that decision."

Over ninety years of friendship and still the only way James had to react to something like this was to be even more stubborn than Steve. Which was a feat in and by itself, he knew. "I don't need fucking therapy, Steve. If you want someone to get therapy so bad start with Tony; have you ever considered what those suits really are or were you too busy noticing he's not Howard? And then you can work up the ladder and check yourself in, because it was not me who drove that plane into an ice shelf."

As silence fell between them James was secretly glad the streets weren't too crowded and the people they did see didn't seem to care too much. Barely anyone recognized Steve out of uniform anyway, and James' arm was covered up, so there really wasn't any reason for anyone to wonder about two men arguing. 

"War is not a one-man-show," Steve eventually said and James wanted to bash a head against the nearest wall, whether it was Steve's or his own he didn't dare to investigate further.

"Ask the spies who operated behind enemy lines during the Cold War, they might disagree," he answered as calm as he was able to, because if they kept arguing it would lead nowhere. "We're both not soldiers anymore, Steve, and may I remind you who was invading HYDRA bases alone?"

"That was to get you back!"

James raised—very deliberately—his left hand to stay his friend and then put it on his shoulder. "And I will always be grateful for it. Who did it again two weeks ago?" Steve set his jaw. "Speaking of that, you're a fucking hypocrite, you know that? Not just about that therapy bit, but from what I heard you went and poked Thor in a spot that is more than a bit sore. Don't try to pull Captain America on me, I knew Steve Rogers before everyone realized it was something to boast about."

He took his hand off Steve's shoulder after a final squeeze and turned to leave without a further word.

"That's exactly why I want you to be there," he heard quietly behind him, and his step faltered for the fraction of a second.

"I heard that!" he called over his shoulder but kept walking. He'd always have Steve's six and Steve knew that, James didn't even need to point that out. Now more than before he also knew they would get where they wanted to be. 

The heatwave broke in quite spectacular fashion a few days later and James watched through the windows of the library as torrents of rain poured from the sky, thunder crashing over the city. As with the full moon, extended heat made the crime rate skyrocket; he had interfered on a burglary or two, beaten the crap out of two boys who tried to rob a supermarket and cleaned out more small fry than in the last two months combined. In other words, it was insane and James was sick of sweating his ass off in the streets and decided he hadn't been in the library for a while. Then he had the little matter of his arm having developed a life of its own ever since someone had tried to run him over with a truck yesterday. 

He was clicking through news articles, half listening to a conversation in whispered Farsi a few tables away about where to get the most authentic food from home in New York. Always good to know. A headline caught his eye, a cruise ship was late to arrive at the harbor and the port authorities weren't exactly sure why. James shook his head; people couldn't keep track of their expensive equipment on this planet already and wanted to explore space. Maybe they should ask Tony sometime how his personal space exploration had worked out and take their cues from that before anything else came and tried to eat them.

An hour later the rain finally let up, although thunder was still rolling distantly and James got up from the computer to walk out on East 42nd to get something to eat. A loaded hot dog in hand he looked up at the Tower and wondered what everyone might be doing and if Steve would be around that evening. Next to him, a man stood with his arms crossed, also looking at the Tower.

"I didn't make the connection, but was that thunderstorm your doing?" James asked as casually as he was able to. Civilian clothes did little to disguise a god and James had been trained to recognize masquerade and mummery and see beyond it. 

Thor turned to him with palpable surprise and narrowed eyes. "Excuse me?"

"The thunderstorm, was that you coming from Asgard?" He was genuinely interested, but Thor only regarded him with more suspicion. "Sorry. I'm James Barnes, I'm Steve's—"

"I know who you are, Steve has talked about you a lot." He dropped the stance and put both hands on James' shoulders. Thor was strong. As was proper for the god of thunder. Ow. "Finally someone with a name worthy of a warrior, Bucky the Winter Soldier."

"That's not—" James cut himself off, not knowing whether he should laugh or cry and opted for giving a lopsided smile. "It's good to finally meet you, Thor."

"And you. Are you staying at the Tower also?"

James shook his head. "No, not … yet. You don't know whether to go up? Do you want a hot dog, too?"

Thor agreed and James bought him one, assuming the man had spent enough time on Earth to be quite used to convenience food. Mostly he was glad that his weird food issues had mostly resolved themselves, though he still didn't like highly processed packaged items. 

"Steve and I did not part in the best way," Thor finally said. "I was very angry."

Snorting, James shook his head. "I noticed, that was quite a storm. Steve. Sometimes he doesn't know the boundaries. Most of the time he gets away with it, because people don't want to see flaws with their idols. Fight it out with him, he can take it."

Thor laughed and finished his hot dog, then asked if he wanted to come with him, which James denied. "I'll be up later in the day. If you can, don't tell anyone, I want it to be a surprise."

Truth was he still hadn't quite decided how to go about that, but he didn't need to give that information to Thor. James went back to the library for the rest of the afternoon, reading about the Thor of legend again and tried to imagine the man he'd just met in a bridal gown. 

He pulled his gloves off as he entered Tony's workroom, throwing them on a mass of tools. Dummy rolled up with a happy sound and James made his claws follow the arm for a few moments before petting him. "Tony?"

"Do you really think JARVIS doesn't tell me the second you walk through the door?" the other man asked, popping up from behind a workbench, shooing the robot off.

James shrugged and pulled off his sweater. "Actually, I don't. Have a look at this junkyard, will you?"

Walking around the bench, Tony wiped his hands on a rag and squinted at him. "What's wrong with it? Don't tell me you broke it."

"One of the circuit boards was damaged, Sir, and keeps shortening out," JARVIS supplied and Tony popped the plate highlighted on the hologram. With a pair of forceps he took off damaged contacts. 

"How did you manage this?" he asked and picked up a tool that looked like a pen.

James rolled his head to work a kink out of his neck. "Some guy tried to run me over with a truck. The heat is making people crazy." He saw Tony frown. "JARVIS, can't you send Tony out to play occasionally so he knows what's going on down below?"

Tony looked up. "You really need to get updated on your pop culture, you keep making accidental references and I can't even make fun of you."

"I could deny you access to the arm." In answer the other man grabbed his heart in mock injury. James smiled. "Was Thor the one to finally manage to get Steve drunk in that body?"

This time Tony didn't even look up from whatever he was doing with forceps and that pen thing and the smoke that was curling into the air. "No, not for lack of trying, though. Pepper has paperwork for you to sign."

Over the past few months, James had found a lot of characteristics that he appreciated in Tony, and his unfazed no-nonsense approach to any given facts was one of the best. For a moment he said nothing, mulling over what he wanted to do next. "I'll come find you tomorrow," he said eventually and saw Tony raise both eyebrows, but he was still busy working inside the arm. 

They were quiet for another few minutes until Tony declared his work done and asked James to try. "Seems to be in working order."

"Of course it does, I did it." Modesty was not something Howard had bestowed upon his offspring, not that he'd had a lot of that himself. 

James smiled at the thought and nodded his thanks. "Is Steve upstairs?"

"I want a full report on the refractory periods of super soldiers," Tony told him, already the next electronic device in his hands. This one looked more like a toy for boys around Charles' age, and James wondered if something vital had been redacted from the man's file. "Bruce and I are going to write a paper."

"Sure thing, Tony." James waved off and made his way to the elevator. Convincing JARVIS not to inform Steve was surprisingly easy and he'd really need to talk to Tony about his security protocols.

He'd snatched his sweater from the floor of Tony's lab but was still too warm from outside to put it back on and just left it in Steve's couch in the dark, his boots on the floor. From what he could see, the apartment was mostly functional, not much in terms of personal items and James wondered for a moment how much Steve really cared about his most immediate surroundings. Not a lot, probably, they'd both learned too much about the volatile nature of material goods. The bedroom was equally dark, but James could see the large shape under the sheets anyway.

"Stop pretending you don't know I'm here," he said into the silence while he climbed on the bed on top of his friend. 

Steve let go of the shield next to him and turned. "What are you doing here?" he whispered as if he was worried about breaking a spell.

"Getting it right this time." James slanted their mouths together, open and intentions clear and Steve finally, finally got with the topic and went along. James planted his elbows on both sides of Steve's head, keeping his weight off him even though he knew he didn't have to and going right to town while Steve held him around the waist, thumbs stroking over the wingtip of his ribcage. When they had to break for air James murmured, "And keep Tony from any further matchmaking attempts."

Steve laughed softly and rolled them over so they were both on their sides, then brought up his hand and stroked over James' face. "You know, when I was on tour, some of the USO girls pulled this stunt pretty regularly."

"Yeah? Did they get lucky?" That wasn't something Steve had told him before, although James should probably have guessed; a guy like Steve alone with thirty women.

Smirking, Steve leaned in. "It would have been impolite to send them away."

James laughed at that, bumping noses with Steve.

"You're really here," his friend breathed.

"We already determined that," James answered, but his throat felt a bit dry. After all that time before the war and the long nights at the front, it probably was best if they stopped talking already. He leaned in for another kiss and used the same movement to shove his right hand into Steve's sweats. The man didn't seem to have any objections.

A long while later, both of them sheathed in sweat and the sheets on the other side of disgusting, Steve pulled him close the same way he had in the nights after he'd first rescued James from Zola, afraid he'd vanish or freeze to death. Steve being the big spoon had become familiar surprisingly fast. "Stay," he said, his arm like a vice and not brooking any argument. At least he'd stopped being so fucking careful, at least for the moment, the healing scratches on James' back and the still tender spot on James' neck were testament to that.

He sighed, stretched out his legs and nuzzled the pillow to scratch an itch. Once upon a long time ago they'd both fit into a bed less than half this size and he didn't miss those days a single bit. He wouldn't mind a shower, though, with the way his hair was clinging wetly against the side of his neck.

"Steve," he said quietly and the arm around his side tightened further. It really was better when they didn't talk. "I'm not going to be your live-in boyfriend," he said into the darkness of the bedroom, momentarily cursing his ability to see clearly. He admonished himself not to turn around. "Tony has designs on the virtues of my arm."

"Can I be yours?" Steve asked after a few moments. "We can go anywhere. "

James wriggled and forced enough room to turn around to face him after all, letting the silence between them speak volumes.

"I had to try," Steve added after a long while and kissed him. James let it go and kissed back, knowing this wasn't the last time they were talking about it. Even wanting Steve like a missing limb—sic!—he needed to make his own decisions before he would accommodate anyone else in his life to the point of sharing living space again. Smiling sadly, he let Steve hold him until he fell asleep, carding fingers through his hair.

Sometimes in the hovels they would use as bases in the middle of missions, when neither Steve nor him could sleep, James would watch his friend sketch in the long hours of the night with little more than the light of a candle to see by. They'd talk in undertones and half-sentences, Steve sketching things from memory; building fronts in Brooklyn, creatures they'd seen at the freak show on Coney Island, and James would disassemble, clean and reassemble both their guns. That was what he could do to keep Steve safe now. He couldn't decide whether it was painful to remember the times before they'd ended up in Europe, when both of them had at least been out of harm's way—except for the trouble they got themselves into—or whether it was a comfort. At times he imagined that 'later' that Steve was talking about, that 'after the war' he promised him, but James had a hard time believing in it. Still now, that was a good memory he fell asleep to. 

The crosshairs were focused on Steve, the way he always did to orient himself, but he couldn't move them away. His breath became ragged and his pulse started to race, but the scope remained steady, focused on Captain America and his index finger curled unbidden. Seconds became eternities, James could feel the breath burn in his lungs, his heart throbbing against his ribs, his face wet as the trigger finally released and Steve went down.

He woke sudden with an indrawn breath and his body frozen in place, night still all around him. It took several tries at swallowing to wet his throat and a conscious effort to relax his rigid muscles. James let out a breath and turned on his back, staring at the ceiling before checking that Steve was still sleeping peacefully. They'd rolled apart in their sleep, something that had never been possible because the beds were too small or it was too cold outside of the blankets. 

In the bathroom he sat down on the toilet seat. "JARVIS," he whispered, "are these apartments soundproof?"

"Yes Sergeant, you didn't wake up Captain Rogers," the AI answered in his normal volume. James nodded and turned on the shower, standing beneath the spray until he'd gathered his thoughts again. The nightmares had been less frequent recently, although they still came and often left James reeling and confused as if he'd just come out of cryo. Breathing evenly again, he shut off the taps and slipped into the briefs he'd stolen from one of Steve's drawers.

True to fashion, the kitchen yielded little more than orange juice, Steve had never been big on cooking; neither of them had been, at least field rations were something they got used to quickly. 

"JARVIS, does anyone in this building hoard real food?" he asked with fond exasperation. "Though I'd hate to wake up Pepper or the Doc."

"Agent Romanoff's fridge is stocked."

"And is Agent Romanoff in the vicinity or has an ETA?"

JARVIS reported, "No, Sergeant."

He'd also have hated to wake up he Black Widow, but if she was out and not expected back, he'd hate for all that food to spoil even more. The elevator took him to her floor—functional furniture much like in Steve's, but with books lying around everywhere in what James recognized as strategic placement—and her fridge was indeed full. James grabbed an apple and a jug of milk that had its best before date yesterday. He'd just added butter, milk and sugar to the grechka and was waiting for it to hit the boiling point one more time when he knew he wasn't alone anymore.

Damn spies, those sorts had always been the only ones able to sneak up on the Winter Soldier, too.

"Are you eating her food?" Clint Barton sounded incredulous, staring at James' naked torso, his cybernetic arm and it occurred to James that the nagging feeling he'd had over the man's file was recognition.

"Does Steve know you're here?" asked Agent Romanoff, Natasha, with narrowed eyes at the same time, no doubt taking in the three knives he carried despite their concealment. 

James took the spoon he'd been tasting with from his mouth. "In your kitchen right now? Not unless JARVIS has tattled on me." The AI remained quiet on the subject, traitor that he was. "That man also lives on granola bars and orange juice, which is ridiculous considering his metabolism." Then he pointed at the pot simmering in front of him. "Want some?"

Armies functioned on their stomachs more than they did on their pay and he hoped the same was true for spies. But because spies were paranoid creatures, he took some out to eat and show them he hadn't tempered with it. He left the choice up to them. 

The Black Widow let her gaze roam over James and he felt exposed, but even with the air conditioning, it was just too damn warm to wear more clothes. He wondered how those two managed with their tight-fitting clothing. She took a spoon from a drawer and stole some out of his bowl; people in her line of business didn't get to be her age without a bit of paranoia and he surrendered his food to her and went for a second helping. 

"You can make real kasha," she acknowledged and he took it as the compliment it probably was. 

James wrinkled his nose and sat down to show he wasn't afraid of her; Steve wasn't the only one here who could play with body language. "It's about the only food related skill they taught me."

She accepted that with a nod and that seemed to be a sign for Barton it was safe to also go for some food. 

"How's Steve?" he asked casually, taking position at the other end of the kitchen. The one position that awarded him the best overview.

James shrugged, stirring his food. "Sleeping, hopefully." Both looked at him with the sort of expectation he might have waited for in Tony. "Do you also want a full report on refractory periods in super soldiers?" he asked warily, ready to have JARVIS announce it to the whole Tower. "You'll have to fight with Tony and Bruce about authorship."

"Please don't," Natasha mumbled and then started belting him with trigger phrases. 

Groaning, James banged his head against the table. "I don't have sleeper programming!"

"How do you know?" Barton asked, which was probably fair. 

James peered at him and rested his chin in his hands. "How do you know you have nothing left from Loki?"

Natasha smirked at that. "Do you need to be debriefed?"

"I'm not an active agent," he shut her down. "I think I stopped being one seventy years ago." Then he looked at Hawkeye. "We had the same target in Baghdad in '99."

Barton startled at that, eyes wide. "You were that son of a bitch."

James grinned with belated triumph.

"You shot me through the stomach," Romanoff added; it was said without accusation, merely an exchange of facts, but James didn't get around to nodding.

"No," Steve said from further down the hallway. "Natasha, that was the Winter Soldier."

Romanoff's eyes narrowed at that and Barton lowered his gaze, shaking his head. Steve's hands landed on James' shoulders, squeezing gently. 

"Steve, it was me," he stated, but instead of straining back to look at Steve, he met Natasha's eyes. "I was under orders." He knew she would have done the same and got it; judging by Barton's raised eyebrow, so did he. Steve didn't, but James would wear him down.

***

After months of semi-continuous access to Barnes' cybernetic arm, Tony was almost satisfied with the data points he had. He wondered if the man would let him and Bruce replace part of the scapula and the clavicle for something a little more sturdy, but that had to come as one of the last issues he wanted to take care of.

"Sir, Miss Potts asks you to meet her on the communal floor for breakfast," JARVIS broke into his tinkering.

He dragged an experimental hand over his cheeks and chin, but decided that any shave would have to wait until later; letting Pepper wait was a gross offense punished by unspeakable deeds. The communal floor was a bit strange, but maybe they had run out of that müsli that Pepper liked, although that, too, was a gross offense. 

"Anything on the cameras?"

JARVIS answered promptly, "Nothing since Agents Romanoff and Barton entered the Tower last night."

So it was probably Barnes, at least that was one problem solved.

When Tony did arrive a few stories up though, he was faced by two super soldiers, two master assassins, one brilliant scientists turned Hulk, the god of thunder, an ex-pararescue … but no Pepper. Whether Barnes would stay the night had never been a question, but his quick acquaintanceship with the rest of their rag tag band was a bit of a surprise, although he had his back very demonstratively turned to no one. The calculating glances he was shooting in Natasha's direction every few seconds or so also spoke volumes.

"Is New York under attack or what are you all doing here?" Tony inquired, because the few times everyone had been in the same room had never ended well. 

"He ate my food," said Natasha and pointed at Barnes, adding a phrase in what Tony supposed was Russian.

Barnes, meanwhile, looked towards Heaven. "I don't know how often I have to say it, I don't have sleeper programming!"

"Buck," Steve tried, "Natasha is—"

"No, she's trying to drive me up the wall because she's testing when I'll snap and go for her throat," Barnes interrupted and crossed his hands over his chest.

When Tony looked over at Natasha she shrugged nonchalantly, which was probably affirmation enough and told him Barnes very much had her number, which probably shouldn't surprise anyone. Clint, meanwhile, was stuffing his face with chocolate chip cookies that Tony really wanted to know where they'd come from because they looked delicious. 

It was Bruce who eventually supplied, "Pepper asked us here."

"I thought that way everyone who hadn't met could do so now," Pepper said from behind Tony, leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. She held a whole stack of files in her arms. "Sit, all of you."

It was always amazing to see how everyone just naturally deferred to Pepper's competency; Tony simply refused to consider what that said about him. 

"Sergeant Barnes, I inquired on your behalf and it seems to have been quite common that soldiers missing in action and declared dead present themselves again to members of the forces. Your case is made a bit complicated by the question whether you are considered a prisoner of war on the one hand, and the … modifications applied to you on the other." Pepper gave one of the files to Barnes, who flipped quickly through the tightly typed pages and raised an eyebrow.

"Please call me James. You mean the arm, but what about the rest, why is it complicated?"

Steve reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. 

Pepper smiled. "Because no one is quite sure of your status. If you're a prisoner of war, you're due compensation and possibly promotion, though I'm not sure you'd like to stay in the Army?" Barnes shook his head. "In that case your discharge papers are also included; you've served your time, no one will accost you about it. That brings us to the second topic; apparently is it possible for people to own bodies. Dead ones, anyway. A man in Germany has sold his skin to a tattoo artist to display after his death, in England some courts have granted ownership to people who have done considerable modifications on skeletons."

Which meant… "Pep, please don't tell us that he's communal property of the USSR and that 180 million Russians want their assassin back."

That would be, simply put, a bit macabre. And probably not something either Barnes nor Steve would agree to, which was obvious in the way Steve's hand tightened around his friend's arm. Bruce was shaking his head at the end of the table, explaining politics to Thor, who clearly thought they were all primitive and wondering why he hung out with them at all. Neither Natasha nor Clint looked surprised, although Sam seemed grim.

"Since no one ever admitted to actually having him or even to his existence, we're probably in the clear, but I'm framing that intentionally in the subjunctive. Since no one has really come forward with any claims towards the arm or the serum—that might have been derived from Dr. Erskine's formula in the first place—well. We're trying to press for prisoner of war status, that would be most beneficial for you. That brings us to Steve, though." Pepper was ruthlessly efficient and slapped another file in front of Steve.

"Me?" The man looked up in surprise.

Pepper gave him a half-smile. "Captain, did you know SHIELD never bothered to have you declared alive again after they retrieved you?"

Even Natasha and Clint blinked in surprise, probably none of them had actually thought about the necessity of that. Tony wished he could say he was shocked in any way. Fury'd always had his secret and knew how to play his hand.

"That's sick, man," Sam interjected and Pepper nodded.

"Well, it was easy for them, that made you all that much more manageable if you ever stepped out of line."

"So all the time, then," Barnes murmured loud enough for the whole table to hear and Pepper very clearly had to suppress a smile. Natasha seemed to suppress laughter that had little to do with humor.

"It's somewhat neat, really," Pepper continued unfazed. "Here we have the same argument, since Dr. Erskine's formula made you into your current self and SHIELD was the successor of the SSR—"

Tony interrupted her, "You're one of the walking dead and since my dad help make you, I own half your ass. Sign the papers, you'll be free."

Pepper sank down on the chair next to him. "Much as I loathe to agree to Tony's flippancy, he's right."

"You love my flippancy," he told her.

She looked at him. "Most of the time I barely tolerate it."

Grinning at her, Tony put a hand on her back and surveyed the table. Steve was very clearly stunned and skimmed over the pages in front of him; Barnes frowned at him, nudging him lightly and when they looked at each other, they both shrugged. Thor seemed to have given up to understand dumb human legislative and Bruce scanned something on a tablet. Wilson still shook his head, Natasha and Clint were talking quietly. 

Barnes signed the last of the pages and slid the file back to Pepper. "That's it, I'm alive again?"

"Yes, James, congratulations." He smiled at her, turning up the charm and she made a mock swat at him as she received the file from Steve as well. "Tony?"

He sighed. "JARVIS says he has nothing on the cameras since Bonnie and Clyde came in last night, so I suppose we're in the clear." He saw Bruce and Sam look uncomfortable. "Or not?"

"I don't know, I still feel … watched," Wilson admitted with a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. "I've seen action, I know when I'm being paranoid and when something is real. This feels fucking real, guys."

Bruce nodded. "SHIELD might have kept their distance, but not this. I know when I'm being hunted and this feels like it."

Barnes looked thoroughly confused.

"Buck, you said you hadn't been around the Tower recently?" Steve interjected kindly. "Not since you were here with me?"

In the end, no one could think bad about the suspicious glance the man shot around the table. "What's this about?"

"We feel watched," Clint explained. "When we're here. But not all the time and never all at the same time. It comes and goes. It's gone completely when we're doing something for Coulson. It's a recent development though, no more than four weeks."

"When I was in Vanaheim, I did not feel anything," Thor said from the other end of the table, confirming that it was not a matter of people, but of place. 

Summing up the last few weeks, Tony explained, "I thought it might have been you. Steve agreed that was possible after you showed up." 

Barnes shook his head again. "No. You wouldn't have noticed me. I didn't feel anything last night." Everyone looked at him. "I'm a sniper, I know when I'm made."

Clint confirmed that with a sharp nod and Tony really wanted to see those two on the range together at some point. 

"Where does that leave us?" Pepper took up the threat of conversation again. 

Natasha let out a breath and shook her head. "Remain vigilant. James, you have the outside perspective, if you notice anything, get on the coms, tell JARVIS, anything."

And didn't that neatly solve the whole moving in issue between Barnes and Steve. Tony smirked at that thought and Pepper kicked him beneath the table, probably for good measure. 

"Okay class, dismissed," he said and clapped his hands, got up. He left the group, only the sound of Pepper's heels clacking after him.

"Don't forget the interview," she reminded him.

He saluted. "Two days, got it."

"Tony…"

He smiled at her, put his arms around her in the elevator. "Everything's okay, Pep. We'll get whoever it is."

For a long moment she just leaned against him. Deep down he knew she wasn't exactly afraid, but after all they'd been through in the last few years he wouldn't have thought bad of her if she had. But Pepper was too clever and could take care of herself and she could handle this madness. Tony was thankful for it, especially since he'd seen Thor suffer through Jane realizing she could handle being with a god and her lover being torn between two worlds, but the danger and Thor's continued loyalty to Loki was too much. 

Pepper stepped away from him. "What about Steve and James?"

"What about them?" Tony echoed. Of course, Pepper hadn't met Barnes on the same terms as Tony had, and more and more, Tony considered his contact to the man an advantage. Pepper looked at him with one arched eyebrow. "They'll be fine, Pep, it won't take another seventy years."

She snorted. "Better not."

He laughed, wondering belatedly whether their resident super soldiers went through a normal aging process. A few years ago, Fury had left him some of his father's things, maybe it was time to go through them again and look for some hint on Project Rebirth that hadn't been redacted by SHIELD. 

Bruce was playing around with the diagram of Barnes' brachial nerve in Tony's workshop later that afternoon, but he barely looked up when Tony entered and didn't ask for his input, so Tony left him to it. Wilson joined them later to be fitted for sturdier shoulder straps for the new EXO model he'd asked Tony about, which was going well.

No one reported in about feeling watched the next day, which was probably an upswing, after everything. Part of the issue was that it was completely nondiscriminatory who occupied the Tower. JARVIS was sweeping the building continuously, but short of Barnes coming and going as he pleased, nothing had changed and the feeling had started long after Barnes had first sought Tony out. All of it was a matter none of them tried to worry about.

The next day, Steve came down again to the shop and watched him work without saying a word. Tony let him for the simple reason that he stayed out of the way and sometimes Steve even knew how to keep his mouth shut. If he was waiting for Barnes though, he was probably out of luck, the guy had an incredibly erratic schedule that wasn't predictable. Tony doubted that the building he'd bought on his initiative were his current digs; he could probably find out, but as long as the man wasn't a direct threat to anyone's safety, Tony had decided to leave him his secrets. For seventy years the man had had none, if he wanted them now that was his right. 

"What do you know about Project Rebirth?" Steve asked eventually. Unlike Barnes, who could not say a word for hours and generally didn't bother Tony at all when he was hanging around, Steve's presence never left his consciousness and that was the only reason he didn't startle the crap out of him. 

He looked up, shrugged. "Less than you. Until a few years ago I thought Dad had been involved in the Manhattan Project. Which would have had made so much more sense, really."

"You father was a clever man." Tony decided not to honor that with a reply. What needed to be said about Howard Stark had been said a long time ago, and Steve was the last person who had any right to bring it up. Tony forgave Peggy Carter when she mistook him for his dad the one time he had visited her after transferring her to New York a few months ago, because she couldn't know, and he and Barnes had discussed something in the beginning, but Tony didn't like to poke that scab. 

Steve held a discarded part from the arm in his hands and was toying with it, probably having no clue what it really was. "I thought about what Pepper said the other morning. Thanks for helping Bucky with all of that red tape."

"He was quite proactive about it," Tony reminded him. That was the fun in it, really. Steve had never bothered to check what the Army had done with his status, while Barnes had been the complete opposite. Of course, it could be the simply matter of wanting to be able to flee the country legally, if he had to, but it was still different. "By the way, now we know half your ass is mine, please don't jump off fifty story buildings without a 'chute, will you? Greasy spots are hard to get off the pavement."

"Sure," the other man dismissed and Tony put the relay he'd been working on down. "What?"

After mulling it over for a few heartbeats he decided to leave that particular fight to Barnes, who had more patience for it form years of experience. "Carelessness is a luxury you don't have anymore," was all he said. It made Steve frown, but Tony was done with the man for the night and he hoped he made that clear by turning away with deliberation.

The thought came again a few days later at a charity event for the Maria Stark Foundation. As for SI a few years ago, they had re-focused the Foundation. It now specifically sought out kids like Harvey—smart kids without much outlook to make anything of it—instead of having them come and apply for funding. It was working rather well, Tony was proud to say, even if it required him to schmooze donors on the regular to spread the word further. People were always happy to donate for underprivileged children, but they wanted to be seen with Iron Man or royalty, that was how the game worked.

Tony had taken Rhodey and Wilson along, because uniforms were always a popular sight and it put the fact on display that SI was still on amicable terms with the military even though they'd terminated weapons' contracts except for War Machine. Wilson was clearly uncomfortable with the high profile of the event, but since it looked like he was staying at the Tower for the time being, it was a good sort of exposure before the stress of press conferences would be bearing down on him. If Barnes was available for this sort of thing, Tony would have asked him along, too, now that he was back among the living. 

After the piety period, it had been widely publicized over the past few decades that Barnes was the only Howling Commando that had been lost in action and countless documentaries, books and lifetime movies had been made of it. Tony doubted that any of them were entirely accurate on how exactly Barnes had died and what impact it had on Captain America to lose his best friend, none of that changed the fact that it was known. He'd spent a lot of time as a young boy obsessing over Steve and how heroic his dive into the ice had been.

Taking a sip of his champagne to wet his throat, he flirted outrageously with a woman he'd last seen in boarding school, sending her on her way with a patented Tony Stark wink. 

These days, Tony thought Steve's last flight had been a suicide mission from the start and no one had seen it. Steve had never intended to come off that plane. If Barnes had been around, Tony imagined he'd have slapped his friend for even considering it to be an option … but then if Barnes had been around, maybe it wouldn't have been an option. Steve's epic boner for his best friend put a lot of things into perspective as far as motivations went. Everyone agreed it was a miracle Steve hadn't died during the DC incident and that any other man would have. Tony didn't want to imagine what Barnes would have done, coming back to himself to find he'd had a hand in his friend's death, all that tightly corralled strength out of control could easily level a small city.

Wilson ambled over to him, having successfully shaken a lady of station who very clearly wanted to take him home with her that night. "Are you running?" Tony asked casually, smiling at one of his father's old contacts at the DoJ.

"Maybe," Sam confirmed, holding on a bit too tightly to the glass in his hand. "How do you stand this? How does Rhodes?"

"You get used to a lot of things when you climb the ladder high enough … or when you're born to it, both of which is not preferable. That's why I'm not running this company." He nudged the man to relax a bit and not give himself an ulcer over the excellent champagne. 

Wilson hid his snort behind another sip. Even though he didn't seem to like it a lot, he was holding up well enough, all things considered. "This is what people like you do, then, mingle and charm money out of other rich people?"

"That's the reason why you and me go flying high when we can," Tony told him and got a laugh. "Excuse me, I really need to talk to those siblings with the excellent bone structure over there, they like to throw money at charitable causes more than they like to talk about it."

Wilson would have to fend for himself for the rest of the evening. If Rhodey felt charitable, maybe he'd let the guy cling to his skirt tails and tell him where everyone went to get really plastered.

Once he was free of his obligations, Tony summoned his latest model and took to the skies. Manhattan lay below him in glittering array and was soon beyond him when he flew over the channel separating the islands from each other. The city rushing below him cleared Tony's head and let him breathe, the filtered night air felt good in his lungs. 

"Sir, I think Sergeant Barnes is having an altercation below us," JARVIS interrupted and projected a zoom-in of grainy security footage. 

Tony considered. Barnes had proven time and again that he could take care of himself, but it probably didn't hurt. "Let's check it out."

He landed on a roof opposite and watched the carnage. He'd seen Barnes fight once before when they had that unfortunate run-in at the protection racket takedown, but that had been against Steve and probably constituted special circumstances. Out of the four people other than Barnes who were there, one was already down and moaning on the asphalt, one had a gun and was aiming at Barnes, but was in serious danger of hitting his buddy, who was in a hand-to-hand with Barnes and faring badly. Some of the man's movements were almost too fast for Tony to follow, a left-right-right-left-down combination that knocked the second man to the floor, writhing and holding his knee, yelling in pain. The sound of a shot, but a knife had embedded itself in the shooter's shoulder. Half a minute more and everything was over. 

Barnes rolled his shoulders and looked around. After a moment, Tony decided to get down onto street level; with the face plate up, he landed next to Barnes. "Need any help with that?"

"I usually just throw them into a police station or get them here," the man answered and shrugged. "They were ganging up on two girls."

"Police notified. Hey, isn't this just around the corner from the building I bought for you?" It probably wasn't, but it was a lucky guess. 

Barnes shot him a look and made to scale the wall of the building next to them, as always intending to be long gone by the time authorities showed up. The men on the floor were still out cold or too hurt to move away. "That's ten blocks from here, but nice try. I was easy on the servos, by the way, don't get your panties in a twist."

"I'm wearing a very nice pair of briefs under the tux," Tony informed him and flew upwards next to him. "Are you coming back to the Tower?"

"No, I have something to check up on. It's not like Steve can't track me down if he really wants to. Or the Widow. See you later, Tony." He took off and Tony decided to let him go, waiting a few minutes on the roof until the police arrived and collected the perps. He wondered if Barnes truly knew how much Steve wanted to, and how little he wanted to be really tracked down by Natasha. Then again, the man had been the world's most covert assassin for running on fifty years, he probably had a very good idea what he was talking about. 

Back home, he made his way down to the common floor, finding Thor and Wilson in front of the TV. Good to know no one had devoured the poor guy after all. "Have you seen Steve?"

From the outside the man's windows had been dark, and just when Tony had decided to be nice and tell him his boy was doing well. 

Sam turned and rested his arm on the back of the couch. "Left when we came back. I suspect he's stalking the stalk, which would be less creepy if we didn't have a stalker, too. Can't we just lock them in a room and hope for the best?"

"You kind of did that on the carrier and it ended in the hospital," Tony reminded him and got a beer from the fridge, peering at the TV. Thor had developed a particular liking for '90s comedies and he and Wilson were doing a Friends run now. Like half the inhabitants of the Tower, Sam wasn't particularly big on sleep and Thor generally needed less than humans. Still, it was a strange pretend at normalcy.

Thor frowned at the screen. "Bucky is different from Steve's tales," he remarked. 

Exchanging a glance with Wilson, Tony shrugged. "Do you think that's bad?"

For a few long minutes, Thor seemed to think about that while the next episode started. "No matter how much we fought, I love Loki and I miss him. Having lost both my mother and my brother, I only realized later how often he saved me from myself. Even with all his scheming and in all his anger, that remains true, and it is what I will remember. I lost my brother twice … I do not wish that on anyone." He fell silent before he continued, "I don't think it's bad, the man I met is a real person, not just a story's hero. I quite like him."

Compliments from Thor came often and ready, when they were deserved and Tony marveled a little at the quick grasp he'd had on Barnes. So far no one had expressed and dislike or wariness at the man—save Natasha, who still considered sleeper programming to be a distant option, but she didn't act overly suspicious around him. Sam, Thor and Tony finished the season before Tony left them to go and finish work on the EXO to send it off for the compile.

The next time he saw Barnes—as opposed to only knowing from security logs when he bypassed the labs to go up to Steve's apartment directly—was outside a police station in Brooklyn. Tony and Steve had gone down to keep up the Avengers' good relationship with law enforcement and if Tony would have seen any possibility to escape from that obligation, he would have. But there was Barnes, two houses down and away from the CCTV camera with a kid clinging to his legs. 

"Buck!" Steve exclaimed, eyes lighting up and Tony let out a breath. Young people in love, they were all the same. 

Barnes looked up wearily. "Hey pal," he answered and managed to pry the boy away from his legs and crouched down. "Give me a minute, will you? Hey, kiddo, I need you to go in there. You've done it before, you can do it now."

The kid, to his benefit, was putting up a brave front, even though he was shaking like a leaf. "Why me?"

In answer, Barnes shook his head. "I have nothing, maybe you're just unlucky. Now this guy over there, he picked fights with anyone who would take him on when he was your age, he would have deserved it coming back to him."

"Hey!" Steve sounded indignant. "They all deserved what they got."

The kid's eyes widened in recognition. Barnes shot his friend a fond smile. "I had to kick all their asses for even considering going in for a fight with a skinny kid like you, yeah. Doesn't make you less of an idiot." Then he focused on the kid again. "I need you to go in and report the guy so they can go and pick him up, okay?"

"You'll wait?" the boy asked and bit his lip. Somehow, he reminded Tony an awful lot of Harvey. 

Barnes considered. "I'll check on you later. Still know the license plate?"

The kid faithfully recited and Barned nodded. When the boy walked past them and turned around to look at the man. "You know Captain American _and_ Iron Man? You really are strange."

"Bucky?" Steve asked when the kid was inside the station and Barnes turned around to leave.

He looked over his shoulder. "Can we just get out of here? I'm not exactly sure what law enforcement thinks of me and I have a drunk driver to … talk to."

"Is that what happened?" Tony asked. "Is he yours? Were you on a mission ten years ago and that's what happened?"

Steve's eyes widened, but Barnes laughed, a small and bitter sound Tony didn't need to hear repeated. Ever. "What, just because you hide away a kid I have to, too?"

"Tony?" Steve echoed. 

Barnes raised an eyebrow and walked faster, blending into the people on the streets with practiced ease.

"Hey, full disclaimer, there's no kid anywhere that carries any of my genetic code. At least that I know of." The qualifier was probably necessary just in case that statement ever came to bite him in the ass. No matter that Harvey still claimed they were connected to con more equipment out of him. 

"Keep telling us that," Barnes answered with a smirk. "He was almost run over by a drunk driver. Guy got away while I was getting Charles off the road. This time at least it was an accident." This time? Steve echoed that sentiment. Turned out this one was the boy who'd almost gotten kidnapped a few months ago. Tony made a note to have the Foundation look into the address of the building he'd bought for Barnes. He had a feeling that was connected and if any children named Charles lived there, they'd have another kid to spend some money on. The boy seemed to be bright enough.

"How's your stalker situation?" Barnes added as Steve reached for his arm to drag him out of earshot. 

"Unchanged, unfortunately. Noticed anything?" Tony was wont to agree with Natasha that Barnes was probably in the best position to spot anyone the cameras were not picking up on. But he just shook his head in denial.

Tony remained behind as the two super-soldiers went a little way down the alley; he didn't need to be in on their special brand of couples’ therapy. He had always suspected that Barnes had carved out a life for himself somewhere, a little niche that belonged to him and no one else, and that it had restored a good portion of the man's sanity. By the time he'd come to Tony he'd been troubled, but he'd been a full-fledged personality and already on his way to recovery. If that wasn't a success story, Tony didn't know what was; maybe he should talk to Pepper about copyrighting the story and making an epic movie out of it.

Romanoff and Barton were in the shop when Tony came down for a quick check on one of his ongoing renderings. It was something he could do from the apartment, but he'd promised Pepper no suits in their living area anymore unless absolutely necessary.

"This is becoming Avengers Central, I should have official consulting hours," he said and pulled up the diagrams he'd wanted to look at. Their two master assassins could deal.

Barton crossed his arms over his chest. "I thought those were eight to five, every other Thursday."

Startled and trying not to show it, Tony glanced away. These two could smell fear and that put him ever so much closer to his eventual demise, never mind that they lived under his roof right now. Sometimes. On and off. "You speak too much to Coulson. You weren't even you that time!"

The only answer he got was a shrug.

"What does the deadly duo even want from me this fair night?" 

Natasha smirked in a way that would have put the fear of God in Tony a few years ago. Now it merely made his testicles try to crawl into his stomach. "Steve says you have a kid."

"Did Steve happen to mention Barnes has a kid, too, then?"

"We know all about James' little apprentice," Natasha said.

"And his scary as fuck grandma," Clint added.

Natasha frowned. "Actually, I think when we consider ages, she could be his daughter."

"Okay!" Tony raised his hands. He couldn't even concentrate on his model, he had to look at those two playing off each other. Here was the reason why Fury had liked to team them up when Romanoff wasn't undercover somewhere. "Does the ghost of HYDRA's past know you're following him?"

Natasha rolled her eyes and Clint made a dismissive sound. "Of course he does, he's a sniper, he's dead if he doesn't notice a tail. Part of the job is to make the call of whether the shot is worth your life or not. Unless you're a purist, then the shot is always worth more than your life."

That echoed something that Barnes had said before, and it was part of the reason why everyone was twitchy about feeling watched. All of them had been in combat situations before and they knew what it meant to be under observations. Tony was the only one of them used to that from his normal life, everyone else had a far finer trigger for these sorts of situations and he had found it was best to take his cues from Clint and Natasha. Steve was too careless with his own life, Bruce was indestructible and a fugitive at the same time, Thor was a god who thrived on battle, Rhodey and Wilson were military nutjobs. 

"I did manage to braid his hair while he was asleep, though," Natasha considered out loud. Tony blinked. "I think Steve isn't too happy with me."

When Clint's only reaction to that was a sage nod, Tony had to agree that this was probably not the best behavior to convince Barnes to stay at the Tower. If that was even what anyone beside Steve wanted; Tony himself was rather ambivalent about the man, so far, he'd done nothing to garner Tony's suspicions. If Barnes wanted to stay—for his own reasons or for Steve—he was welcome to, and Tony had made that clear from the beginning.

"Not that I don't appreciate the mental image," Tony told them, "but I don't think you're here to assess my potential parenting skills, which you know would be abysmal."

Though he still thought he would do better than Harvey's deadbeat dad, but that wasn't much of an effort. Tony always thought he'd make a decent uncle who breezed in every couple of years and lavished the kids with presents only to breeze out an hour later. He liked Harvey, he liked doing things for him because the kid was smart, but if anything even resembling responsibility came his way he'd run like hell, simple as that.

Clint snorted. "Coulson wants an assessment on Bucky."

"I'd think Coulson knows more about Bucky Barnes than all of us combined," Tony answered with a smirk. Coulson was such a fanboy for Captain America, there was no way around also knowing about his best friend. The smile on Natasha's face spoke volumes. "And I thought you were responsible for personality recruitment assessments."

"We're not recruiting," she said. No, Tony knew that; Coulson wanted to know if Barnes was a threat that needed to be eliminated, even if that might send Captain America into a downward spiral. Considering everything that had happened with Fury and in DC, even Agent Romanoff's cold logic might be considered biased. She and Clint would be the ones to carry out any potential orders, no matter what that would mean to them personally. But Coulson was mistaken if he thought he could rope Tony into his SHIELD machinations the way Fury had tried to (and failed).

Tony shook his head and put the wire coil he'd been examining down on the bench. "Barnes has his shit together."

Two assassins in his workshop exchanged a glance and nodded at each other as one before Clint turned and left the room after a last raise of his hand. Natasha remained behind, leaned against a bench and watched Tony pretend to work. Tony could work through nights of feeling as if someone was standing in the corner and watching him with burning eyes, but not through Natasha Romanoff casually watching him on his own turf.

"What?" he asked eventually.

"Careful Stark," she said, and then breezed out, presumably to make her own report to Coulson. "If you keep doing nice things for everyone, people might think you actually cared."

***

James sat on the middle tower of Brooklyn Bridge facing Manhattan, the silhouette of Stark Tower standing out in the skyline. He looked down at his hands, one flesh and one not. Wars were not the idea of the people who lived and died in them, although they were the ones paying the price. He would until the day he came to his inevitably violent end, although for the moment he was free; no masters and no handlers, no orders and commands. It felt good. Over the last months James hadn't fully realized how quiet his life had become, only faced with that volatile gathering of individuals at the Tower he'd noticed, and now wasn't surprised he'd started to feel he had to take action. Get himself back out.

His old life was gone—both of them, or all three of them—Steve was the only part of it that remained and he couldn't ask for a better one. But Steve would have been a part of James whether he'd ever gone into the ice or not, that wasn't even worth the consideration and Sam was wrong when he said it was the root of their codependency. That had started in a different time, with skinned knees and a false sense of obligation and James letting himself be pulled along, because Steve needed someone to look out for him. It should have ended with the draft letter and orders for Europe, but it hadn't and they'd both saved each other’s life so often by now that it was a moot point to discuss it further. 

This new life he was living still had Steve in it, along with Dorothy, Charles, Tony and all those other people living in that Tower, the librarian who let him stay after hours while he shelved books on that floor. He liked that life. He liked that he could go to Steve and find an open door and that Steve could find him when he needed to, that Tony was concerned not just for the arm but had always treated him like a person, that Bruce had lost his initial caution and was not shy to ask. James liked being free and without obligations. 

Tony had a terrible choice in ringtones and James really needed to bother to change it.

"Robocop, what's your 20?" Tony asked and his voice sounded slightly strained.

James grimaced. "It's a good thing you're not in law enforcement."

"Oh, but I am. Clint might be in trouble, when can you be here?" Well, that explained the tone of voice and the blatant absence of levity. 

"Give me fifteen minutes," he said and stuffed the phone back into his pocket while levering himself up and making for the steel cables, running with little regard for balance.

Clint could look out for himself; he'd been an agent for decades and was just as deadly with that bow as James was with a sniper rifle and he knew when a situation was likely to need backup, so if he had gotten into trouble he couldn't handle it had to be significant. James wondered if this trouble was the reason Natasha and Clint had finally stopped reconnaissance on him a week ago, after tailing him on and off for days. Belatedly he remembered everyone's reports about someone stalking the Tower's inhabitants and wondered if that situation had finally found a grim resolution. 

The fastest way into Midtown led along streets heavily crowded at this time of day and James took liberties and a few detours, jumping over bushes in parks and dodging pedestrians faster than they could react to his presence. After his second near-miss with the hood of a car, he started simply shoving them away with his left arm when they were in the way, which was still easier and less conspicuous than taking to the roofs; Manhattan was too plastered with high rise building for that to be convenient.

Sweat streamed down his back and he was exhilarating in the feel of the hunt in a way he hadn't since they'd thawed him out to track down a whole group of dissidents just after the Iron Curtain had lifted and they would carry their secrets abroad. Navigating the sun to his side to escape its summer intensity, he approached Grand Central and slipped behind it. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed a shadow that struck a chord, but he couldn't place it. JARVIS opened doors for him instantly.

"Welcome back, Sergeant," the AI greeted him and once James was in the elevator and had caught his breath, he nodded.

"I don't think I still retain the rank, but hello JARVIS, is there any news?" He bound his hair back with an elastic to get it out of his eyes and off his neck.

The elevator ascended quickly, but he knew he had a few moments. "No, Sergeant," JARVIS answered, completely ignoring legalities, "everyone appears to be exceedingly worried, though."

James could imagine that and when he stepped onto the common floor he was faced with the whole ensemble of drawn faces. Steve said, "Bucky," and James knew that relief stemmed from knowing he was okay more than anything else and when his friend stepped away from the group he caught him in a brief hug. 

"I'm good," he murmured back and let go. A hologram hovered in the air above the dining table, warehouses and loading docks, a waterfront, but not an area he recognized immediately. He nodded at the rest of the group when he came closer, standing next to Natasha. He took a breath. "So, what do we have?"

"Last known location of Clint's tracker is in a warehouse district in Bayonne," Sam started and James frowned, zooming out of the map.

"Jersey?" he asked with a mild sneer. "What was he doing there?"

"Coulson had some evidence pointing at an object that might not be of Earth origin and wanted someone to look into it," Natasha said in a monotonous voice. "Should have been a quick in and out, reconnaissance only. The 48-hour window lapsed, he didn't come back."

"I thought you don't work for SHIELD anymore?" When he looked at Steve he just shrugged.

While SHIELD had gone down with the Triskelion, apparently Fury had struck a deal and now Phil Coulson—who James had never met—was the new director. The organization had shrunk considerably and didn't have the same far-reaching fingers as SHIELD had had originally, but no government wanted to be without an intelligence network. The SHIELD takedown had left a hole that needed to be filled. But Steve had said—

Natasha shook her head. "We don't. We do favors for Coulson, occasionally." She shot a quick glance at Steve, who was still studying the hologram. 

James raised an eyebrow at Tony, who made to ward off the accusation. "No, I don't. Coulson knows if he wants something he needs to show up in person."

"We'll talk about this," James murmured, but then focused back on the hologram. "What do we know about said object?" Natasha shook her head again. Nothing, then. "So this will be a walk in the park, I see. Any plans I missed?"

"Storm the warehouse, get Clint out, come back here," Tony stated and Sam nodded in agreement, Thor and Steve falling into the same movement. Bruce looked skeptical, Natasha's expression was blank.

The timestamp at the last known location was a day old, which meant absolutely nothing in James' experience. "What if he's not there anymore?"

Silence reigned for several moments. "It's our only hint," Steve said eventually. "Tony, Sam and Thor can do air support, you can take position here to cover us." He zoomed in and pointed at a building several hundred yards off. "Bruce and I go in and look for Clint, Natasha you stay here at command and keep everyone connected."

Predictably, Natasha let out a vicious curse in Russian and James raised a hand to stay her, and also Tony, who was already starting to argue. "Steve, that sort of plan was harebrained when we were hunting Nazis, and even then you let Dernier set a charge, first. Now we might be dealing with aliens and you want to be the second lamb to the slaughter? No."

"We need a vanguard—"

Tony interrupted. "We're not an army, Cap!"

"We're trained for extraction," Natasha added. "This is not deep cover, if they caught Clint they know we're coming and we should come in strength."

Bruce interrupted for the first time. "I'm not sure how comfortable I am with using the other guy for this if we don't know what's going on."

James nodded and surveyed the area again; this sort of place was hard to keep an eye on from anywhere but the air and sniping would be close to useless. Steve had a tactical mind, he'd made most of their plans when they'd invaded HYDRA, he knew that. 

By now the others were discussing against each other and James had to raise his voice to be heard. "Which one of you felt watched last night?"

Over the past week—after Natasha and Clint had pulled back—he'd watched the Tower at various hours of the day but seen nothing strictly out of place. In the streets were always people who looked at the Tower, ever since the Battle of New York it had become an attraction and people knew the Avengers stayed there more or less regularly. It wasn't easy to discern who was just a curious onlooker and who was _looking_. 

Hesitantly, Thor raised his hand. James nodded, then exchanged a quick look with Steve, who nodded after a heartbeat's delay. "Thor, it would be good if you stayed here as backup. Sam, you too."

"Why?" Sam asked and the question was fair. James could feel Steve's eyes boring holes in the side of his skull.

"Because you can fly," James said simply. "You'll be there fastest. Thor, too, and since we don't know the details of whether you're really stalked or just suffer mass paranoia, no one should stay alone on missions. You can reach us fast if something goes wrong."

Tony added, "You also don't wear armor, which is something we should rectify but haven't yet. Between the rest of us we have enough bullet proof skins." James was reminded of the day he'd put several slugs into Steve a few months ago and grimaced. "No worries, I thought of you, too, the attachment to my darling is dear to me. Check Steve's digs."

With a wary nod of thanks, James finished, "The rest of us go in together after Tony scopes out the surroundings from the air. I'll be more useful on the ground, I'm more likely to hit any of you with a ricochet than anyone fleeing the scene. In case we really find anyone to hit."

"Right," Tony said, "get suited up boys and girls, we'll meet here again in thirty."

James followed Steve upstairs, keeping quiet until the elevator door slid shut behind them and they were alone for a few minutes, then turned on his friend, ready to strangle him. "You're still working for SHIELD? And you couldn't say that why? Steve, they tried to _kill you_! They tried to make _me_ kill you!"

"Just for Coulson, Buck, he— I got him killed once and—"

"The hell you did!" James yelled at him, following Steve who had stormed into the bedroom. "I read the reports Steve, you were nowhere near the containment area. Coulson was killed by a tortured alien who was mind-controlled by yet another group of aliens using an artifact that got both of _us_ killed seventy years ago!" 

More or less, but Steve had this tendency to turn the truth the way he wanted to, James had no reason to play this game by any other rules. 

Captain America's uniform lay on the bed and Steve was stripping out of his clothes, which wouldn't have been fair under different circumstances, but James was too angry. 

"They're just favors, Buck, if he needs one of us for a specific case. He never asks for small things and we can always say no—"

James didn't let him finish once more. "Have you? Said no?"

Steve looked at him, dressed only in t-shirt and briefs. They held each other's gaze for a long time until Steve was the one to look away. "No."

That was so typical Steve. No time at all might have passed since he found his friend beaten up in an alley because he couldn't keep his mouth shut yet again. James stared at him. "Do you at least take backup?"

"I don't really trust backup since…," Steve trailed off, but James could complete the sentence without help. Since DC. Since Rumlow. James got that, more than Steve probably thought possible, but Steve was taking stupid risks out of unnecessary guilt and misunderstood loyalty. Not that this was a first, either. 

With a sigh, James walked around the bed to stand in front of his friend. He fisted a hand in his t-shirt and pulled him forwards, kissing him hard and thoroughly. It only lasted a couple of seconds, but he knew they both felt ready for battle when they parted. "We'll fight about that later. Now, what did Tony say about thinking of me?"

Turned out Tony had a uniform for James, too; an armored affair in black and muted grays and browns, not unreminiscent of what HYDRA had used as combat uniform for the Winter Soldier. Distantly he wondered whether that should scare him, but it felt right and he found support for knees and wrists and when he buckled the last straps he found everything fit perfectly as if he'd been measured for it. Come to think of it, he probably had; JARVIS must have more information on him than just what was going on in that metal monstrosity. Secretly he admired Tony a bit for what he'd done, sure the harnesses and pouches would be filled with weapons and ammo soon enough. Leave it to Tony Stark to get everything ready for a teammate who had never wanted to be one. Sighing, James slid the earpiece into his auditory canal in a way that it was neither impairing his hearing nor let him feel it. 

James Barnes was ready for combat.

When he turned around to Steve, the man was just swinging his shield across his shoulders, a half-smile on his face as he. "What? And could you _be_ any wider? I feel that target on your back used to have less of you to cover."

"You're just jealous," Steve shot back as they made their way back to the elevator.

Snorting, James rolled his eyes. "Of what, that bulls eye between your shoulders?"

They kept bickering until they reached the common floor again, where Tony was already waiting for them in one of his suits, clearly defying the rule Pepper had made about no armor in the living quarters. Thor and Sam stood at the ready, Natasha was in her skintight combat gear; in the end Bruce was the only one who remained unchanged, but maybe that was for the better. The table was littered with weapons—trademarked Stark Industries—and Tony casually mentioned these could even take down an Asgardian, if need be.

The area around the warehouse across the bay was conspicuously empty for a weekday, even this late in a weekday, and James drew a gun just to have it at the ready. 

"Clear," Tony said into their ears. No visible movement from the air. "We have heat signatures in the building, two, maybe three."

"Copy. Keep circling, see if we flush anyone." Steve was in front, and while James really would prefer to bring up the rear, he left it up to Bruce, hoping the Hulk would eliminate any threat coming for them. 

When they arrived at their target destination, the door was welded shut. Exchanging a quick look with Natasha, James put a hand on Steve's arm to stop him from sliding the shield off his shoulders. "Let me," he said and reached out with his left, aware that this was the first time since DC that both his friend and the Widow had seen the arm in action. The metal gave easy enough and James slid open the door on its rolling mechanism. The screeching was overly loud in the quiet late afternoon.

They fanned out, Steve and James covering point and second respectively, falling back into long familiar patterns; Natasha had their backs, Bruce a few steps behind the rest of them to give them space to wield their weapons. A metallic click told James Tony had come down behind them. 

Yawning emptiness greeted them. No artificial light shed any illumination on the inside, but every one of James' instincts told him no one was there. Their steps echoed. Something else hit him though. "Smells of brain."

If nothing else that brought him the stares of his companions, though Steve was careful to keep an eye in front of him. "Don't give me that, I'm an assassin. Doesn't smell like other innards. Brain is … special."

"Whatever the Soviets had you do, it was weird shit and I want none of it," Tony said into his ear.

Steve raised a hand to shut them up. "Anything?" he asked quietly.

"No," Tony answered. "Heat signatures behind the wall back there. Door to your right."

They kept advancing, by now Natasha also had her gun drawn. The smell became more intense and James had to suppress flashbacks to a military facility in '73 where they'd attempted brain transplants. Unsuccessfully, as far as he knew. Karpov had been a sick bastard.

Open space was the enemy of covert operations and everything in him itched to press his back to the wall or take to the rafters suspended beneath the ceiling. The shield covered Steve's front as he opened the door, then his friend gasped and covered his mouth with his free hand. James stepped around the door frame and swept his weapon around the room, a sort of adjacent building probably meant as a locker or break room for workers. The smell was overwhelming. He heard Natasha step in behind him while he took in the scene in front of him.

In war, violence and cruelty were a far too common sight and James and Steve had images seared into their minds that they'd never be rid of. Even still, James had never seen the likes of this, bodies that were completely undamaged except for the neat cut around the crown of the head, removing the skull and exposing shriveled brain matter. Most of them were dressed in work clothes, overalls, dirt stained t-shirts, work boots.

Clint crouched in a cage-like structure too small to lie down or stand up in, hands bound behind his back and feet taped together and precariously balancing. One eye swollen shut and bruised purple, already turning yellow at the outer edges meaning it had to be a few days old. A small trickle of dried and crusted blood had run down his forehead and into the other eye. Something was slung around his neck, but he must have heard them, for his good eye snapped open and he stared at their little group, then rolled his eye upward, it almost looked as if he was having a seizure.

"Clint," Natasha snapped and she would have jumped to his side to let him out if not for Steve holding her back. She whirled around, ready to argue and that was the moment James got it and snapped the gun towards the ceiling. Something that might have been a person once clung there seemingly to nothing substantial, bared teeth needle sharp and elongated, eyes without pupils. 

Before he could fire off a bullet though, the thing had let itself drop to the floor, reflexes faster than James' and it was past both Steve and Natasha before either of them could react, too. Tony must have gotten to it, because by the time James got to the door it was just a smoking heap of cooked meat. Breathing a sigh of relief, James turned back to where Clint was still crouching in his cage. His knees were probably killing him.

Natasha ran her hands over the metal looking for a weakness when James stepped up and used the arm to simply rip the structure apart. A garrote was wrapped around Clint's throat, making it hard to breathe and swallow, let alone speak and James slipped a serrated knife carefully between skin and cloth and started to saw. It came off easy and by that time Natasha had cut off the tape holding hands and feet bound.

"Ooph," Clint said and fell on his ass, slowly trying to get one leg to straighten. His face crunched up in pain. "Fuck. Ouch."

"Hey Doc!" James called, although he doubted Bruce would be able to do anything. Clint rubbed his wrists against his thighs to get the blood flowing again. Natasha crouched by his side, asking if he was hurt.

James left them to it and stepped up to where Steve and Tony were waiting; Tony had the face plate up, James took that as indication that danger wasn't imminent. "Any clue what that might have been?"

"Looks like zombies to me," Tony stated. "Ghouls, zombies, can we have some aliens again? At least they didn't eat anyone."

"You can come hunt drug dealers and kidnappers with me," James offered, watching as Clint managed to stretch his legs, but he was clearly hurting. "Do we call the police?"

"SHIELD needs to do their own cleanup," Tony answered before Steve could get a word in. The way Steve set his jaw meant he wasn't exactly of the same opinion, but also didn't have any idea what to do with the bodies littered around them and the remains of … whatever out there. James tried not to look at the cracked open skulls and the other men were doing the same, expressions grim.

A few minutes later, Clint limped up to them, leaving Bruce and Natasha to look at something off to the side. "Thanks for coming to my rescue."

"Anytime Katniss." Tony attempted a feeble grin that faltered quickly. "Now tell us what that was so we can get away from this smell, Super Soldier Number 2 has been turning green for a while."

James scowled at him.

Clint wrinkled his nose. "I think it's a sort of vampire that drinks cerebrospinal fluid instead of blood."

"That's…," Steve trailed off.

"Disgusting?" James offered and shook off the image of that thing they'd seen cracking open skulls and slurping the liquid from them. 

Bruce and Natasha came back. Bruce started to herd them out of the door. "I think we have a radiation leak that might be responsible for our friend out there. I suggest we get out and leave this to professionals. Doesn't look like it was made on this planet."

"I'll notify Coulson," Clint said, casually leaning on Natasha's shoulder to take a little bit of his weight. "Should I be worried about craving brains anytime soon?"

Bruce stopped and considered. "No, I don't think so, but I'll do some blood work when we're back."

Clint nodded his thanks and slowly they made their way back outside. James couldn't help but keep an eye on the empty space of the warehouse, feeling exposed. Judging by how close Steve stuck to him, eyes roaming left and right, he was feeling it, too. A lightly guiding hand landed on his back on the height of his kidneys, a warm point of contact that James was secretly grateful for. 

As soon as the door to Steve's apartment fell shut behind them James turned around and pushed Steve against it, attacking his mouth. It didn't take any coaxing at all for Steve to open, let James in with a gasp. He couldn't get close enough, thigh working between Steve's. Thank fuck Steve had gotten over his conviction that James needed to be treated with the care of a newly hatched chick.

Neither of their uniforms were conductive to frantic undressing though, and when they had to come up for air, James growled. 

"Easy," Steve murmured, hands buried in his hair.

"I'll give you easy," James answered and scraped his teeth along Steve's jaw, sucking a bruise up right on the jugular where the material didn't cover. Steve's laugh ended in a cut short moan and James grinned, sunk his teeth into the soft flesh. "Bedroom," he said.

Steve made an affirmative sound but neither of them moved. By now James was getting uncomfortable in his clothes, adrenaline from a battle that didn't happen still in his veins and not about to leave him anytime soon, Steve pressed up against him and with nowhere to go. Both of them were breathing heavily and he could feel Steve's erection against his thigh. 

"Buck," Steve panted, moving his hips and wasn't that an interesting feeling. Steve also seemed to think so, because he did it again before boosting himself up against the wall and slinging his legs around James' sides. What a comical picture they must be, Steve towering over him like this, bending down for another searing kiss. But James, with all that metal grafted on and inside of him, was heavier than Steve with all his bulk, which was probably the only reason why their center of mass didn't tilt. "Bedroom," Steve confirmed when he removed his mouth again. 

Groaning half in laughter and half in exasperation, James trusted Steve to hold on by himself and let his hands travel over his ass, his lower back while they kept kissing. "I'm not sure you jumping my bones was the way I meant to go," he said as they reached the bedroom, Steve letting himself get down to his feet. 

Steve grinned at him as he started to unbuckle his uniform and James followed suit. There were too many snaps and straps for it to be practical to do for each other. "Oh, but you defiled a national icon. You should be proud of yourself, I'm sure it's somewhere on Tony's bucket list."

Grimacing, James left the trousers in an unceremonious heap on the floor. "That was not an image I needed," he said but still reached for Steve. Neither of them needed any of that dominance crap, they'd known each other too long and too well to fall into that sort of pattern and they each gave as much as they got.

He was about to fall asleep to Steve's regular breathing; it was full dark outside, much darker than it should have been in New York, where light never truly ceased. Something had made him open his eyes once more, though, something prickled at the back of his neck. Behind him, Steve was still breathing regular with sleep, James could feel warmth and relaxation radiating off of him. 

A shadow darker than the night caught his eye at the window and he had to blink to bring it to into focus. What he saw startled him, an impossibility, they were a hundred floors up, no one could be outside. But it was familiar. It shouldn't be familiar. He blinked again and the shadow was gone. James could feel the gore rise in his throat, stomach cramping and acid burning in his throat. After a mad dash into the bathroom he made it to the toilet bowl just in time to lose everything that wasn't there, because they hadn't managed to eat dinner. The lights came on dimly and he felt Steve kneel next to him, one hand on his back. That hand felt enormous and warm and James would have sobbed with gratefulness if he didn't have another round of bile coming up.

"Bucky," Steve murmured, rubbing small circles on his back. He kept saying things, nothings that Steve's mom and James used to murmur to Steve when he was sick and delirious. James clung to that memory, because it meant he was still him; he clung to the cold sweat running into his eyes, because it annoyed him and that meant no one was in his head. "Hey," Steve said, "hey, what's wrong?"

James shook his head, flushed the toilet. When he wiped his mouth, Steve handed him a glass of water so he could rinse. "I thought I saw— I don't know. Something. Sorry."

Steve made a sound of denial. "Don't worry about it. Better?" James nodded. "Want to come back to bed?"

Taking a deep breath to center himself, James shook his head and plastered a shaky smile on his face. "No, but you go."

Steve shook his head and sat on the floor next to him. "Buck, what's the matter?"

"Nothing," James said and sounded unconvincing to his own ears. "I've had so many people in my head over the last seventy years, sometimes I need to make sure I'm still alone." James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038, 1917 - 1945. He had Steve beside him, a warm hand on his knee, he was in Stark Tower. He knew who he was. "Go to bed, there's no reason both of us should be awake."

"Bucky—" 

He smiled and imagined it was a bit more convincing than before. "I'll be here in the morning."

Sighing, Steve shook his head, but leaned in and kissed James' cheek. "Okay. Wake me if you need me."

When Steve was back in the bedroom, James took a quick shower, then dressed in a t-shirt that probably belonged to Steve and sweats. He felt more together, the episode already surreal like a dream, just that he knew it hadn't been one. Rather than staying in Steve's apartment and chance to wake him and put his hair-trigger back in place, James took the elevator down to the common floor. More often than not, this place was empty; in an entirely unsurprising turn of events, the Avengers were not a terribly social bunch. Most of them were natural loners or had been through enough in their lives to regularly get caught up in their own heads.

Tonight though, James had company in Clint, who sat in the dark in front of the idiot box, zapping through infomercials on mute. 

"Hey," James said and let himself down on the other end of the couch, "can't sleep?"

Red-rimmed eyes stared up at him, put in even starker contrast by the blue light. "What does it look like?"

For a moment, James considered a smile, but opted against it. Clint was clearly tired, and still in pain despite what James suspected Bruce had given him for it, but he couldn't be in his bed, couldn't sleep. James had been there, back in the trenches long before Steve had shown up, just that they had also been cold and miserable and wishing they were home where Nazis didn't try to kill them with mortar fire in the middle of the night. He'd been there after Steve had gotten him away from Zola, he'd been there after DC. Sometimes being around what was most familiar and most dear in the world was the worst. 

So James kept his tongue and watched infomercials about robots that automatically vacuumed rooms, the sour taste of bile still not entirely gone from his mouth. He knew he couldn't have seen what he had, it was his mind playing tricks on him for sure, residual adrenaline and endorphins and a bed that was not quite his own. Just for a split second it had seemed so _real_ , as if James would have to only reach out… And that was the point where he knew it couldn't have been real, because it had been hyper real, and his every instinct told him nothing had been there, Steve and he had been alone. 

"Lights, thirty percent," Clint said suddenly and when James raised his head, he was looking at him. "If I turn into a brain slurping vampire … put me down. I can't ask any of the others, they won't do it."

No, they would look for a way to save the guy, no matter that it was probably impossible. "Natasha would," he said in answer.

"Yes, Tasha would," Clint responded, and James knew the part he wouldn't say, that he didn't want to put her in the position to have to do it. James didn't know what their relationship was; it was more than mere friendship, but that was common in their line of work and not necessarily proof for anything. He'd read their files, he knew how Natasha had come to work for SHIELD and what role Clint had in it. 

James nodded, then deliberated over his next words. "If I ever turn on you— on Steve—"

"Yeah," Clint said, his expression turning less grim, then held out a first. James bumped his against it and felt strangely lighter. 

A few minutes later, Sam's voice sounded behind them. "What are you two losers doing here?"

Exchanging a glance with Clint, James shrugged and turned around. "Just a little suicide by proxy pact among fellow assassins," he said, as dry as he could and Sam looked at both of them as if they'd lost a few screws. At least he had never haggled James about getting counseling, he wondered if Steve had said a few things after James had said his piece and wouldn't discuss it further. As far as James could tell, Sam was a good guy, but far too similar to Steve for James' liking; looking out for one reckless idiot required all of his mental capacity already. Still, Sam was a nice guy. He had that going for him.

In the light of day, James' mild panic attack—for he could recognize it for what it had been—from the past night seemed even further away, but the apparition in the window still didn't let go of him. 

Common understanding these days seemed to be that the US had followed a doctrine in their modern warfare, that of sending technology first and human soldiers second. James knew without looking at historical data that this was true only to a certain degree, because even considering all of that, over four hundred thousand dead soldiers in the two years the States had fought in the last world war were too many. He himself had been listed as one of those casualties until recently. But even with that understanding in place, James and many of his fellow soldiers had been little more than cannon fodder when they arrived on the shores of the European mainland, their training barely sufficient to keep them alive.

James knew what it felt like to be hunted, to sit dug in for the night and never to know when the enemy might find them anyway, sneak past the man on watch, put a bullet in heart or skull and end it all. But James also knew what it was like to be the hunter; the calm on the inside when finding prey was a matter of time only, the exhilaration of pursuit with only the one objective: to kill.

The previous night had left its mark on him, but the more he thought on it, the less like a figment of his imagination and brain on adrenaline it felt. He'd seen something. Someone. James refused to stand idly by and become the prey in his own head. That meant he would be going on a hunt again tonight; maybe not with the objective to kill, but the thrill of pursuit already heightened his senses. 

He was back in his hotel room, taping his joints and putting on his darkest, tightest fitting clothes. The point was to blend in with the people on the street and to be able to go on pursuit as well, and that new uniform might be the right fit for missions, but not for this one. Looking around in the faltering light he noticed how many of his clothes were now in Steve's apartment. Outside, clouds were roiling in and it would only be a matter of time until rain would drench the city. He bent down to lace his boots when his phone went off.

"Hey Dorothy, is everything okay?" He'd given her the number in case she ever had reason to reach out to him. For all he knew she had a large family, many friends, but still he felt better that way. 

On the other end of the line he could hear nothing but occasional rustling, thumping sounds. Then a muffled, "You can try as much as you want you won't get in here!" yelled by Dorothy, whose voice he would have recognized anywhere. Without a second thought he finished lacing his boots, grabbed his phone and shimmied out the window, taking to the roofs. Dorothy lived less than fifteen blocks away from where he had been staying and if he cut out traffic, he could he there in mere minutes.

The lock at the entrance door was broken, but it didn't look like fresh damage, and he didn't spend too much time examining that. On the fourth floor, he found a man battering against a door; mid-forties, stubbled, close-cropped hair and built even more massive than Steve. The wooden frame already had cracks and wouldn't be able to stand much more abuse.

"Hey you," James called out to get his attention. 

The guy turned around. "Yeah?"

"What do you think you're doing there?" 

A sneer showed on the face, a scar bisected one cheek. "None of your fucking business," he growled and faced James entirely now.

"Yeah?" James asked. "Too bad, I'm making it mine anyway."

That was enough to get the guy truly angry and he came at James. It was so cliché when he said, "Have it your way," and James felt set back seventy, eighty, ninety years into the past, picking up fights for Steve or Steve picking up fights for him. 

The narrow confines of the hallway were not best suited to James' fighting style and the guy got in an initial tackle, because James had anticipated a high swing to the face. From there on it was short work though, James pressed him upwards with his left arm, got a leg over him and pinned him to the floor with his arms behind his back. When the guy made to get up, James drew a knife and held it to his throat. "Give me the excuse, I dare you. I'm itching to put this into someone and I don't care who."

Almost immediately the guy acquiescented, but James still wasn't happy with that. Putting away his knife he placed his knee on the guy's wrists and used both hands to collapse carotid and jugular, sending him instantly off to unconsciousness. "Trying to take the guy who has Captain America on speed dial," he murmured, making sure the guy was truly out. "Fuck you."

When he turned around and got up, Dorothy stood next to him, a Mossberg 590 in her hands, determination on her face. Unsure of how to act he got back to his feet slowly and raised his hands. 

"James," she said, "what are you doing here?"

He looked around. No neighbor had come out, but he wasn't necessarily surprised. "I— you called me?"

"I did? Oh my, maybe a pocket call after I called the police." She noticed the direction of his gaze and flipped the safety back on before taking down the gun. "Is everything all right?"

"What? Yes. Yes, everything is fine. Can I ask—" The image was amazing, that little old lady with a riot shotgun. Too bad Natasha had stopped tailing him, she'd have gotten a kick out of this.

She looked at him, clearly unimpressed. "James, don't tell me you've never seen a girl hold her own." Flashes of Peggy in his mind, he shook his head. He'd forgotten that just because the medical staff counted as noncombatants, they were still very well able to defend themselves. Dorothy smiled. "You should probably get out of here if you don't want the police to make certain connections."

True to her word, sirens wailed outside. Still not turning his back to her, he made his way to the hallway window. 

"James, dear?" She asked and he paid extra attention to her. "Captain America, is it?"

Laughing, he shook his head at her. "You should come by Stark Tower sometime, I'm sure everyone would be your instant fan."

He made his way out the window and back onto the roof, then towards Manhattan. Rain had started to come down, steadily enough to drench him in a matter of minutes, but these were conditions he was familiar with. 

The Tower was surrounded by all of Midtown with its high-rise buildings and national monuments and the roofs were only semi-useful. James loitered around the streets among the tourists staring up at the building, covertly looking at faces while getting food, drink, scrolling through his phone. He changed his angle several times, from south to northwest, east, covering all directions. 

HYDRA and the Soviets had trained him to recognize patterns better than the Army ever could have in the short time they had to train him, also because in his position in the Army, covert work hadn't been necessary. Faces stood out in the crowd now, sometimes, but not always and when twilight started to leak into the clouds, James did make his way up a building on Park Avenue away from camera systems. 

Manhattan didn't sleep; people were around at all hours of the day and night, the crowds just thinned the longer the night wore on. The rain did its own to make even fewer people remain on the streets, giving James an ideal vantage point, the detached scope of a rifle propped on a small tripod. He was a black spot in the black of night and no one expected him back at the Tower, he could hold position for as long as it took. 

Considering the situation further, it probably wasn't even conjecture. A group of individuals such as the Avengers, with highly visible members like Tony and Steve, would draw a crowd at any given time of day, but also people less sane, stalkers, con men, frauds. All of them had obviously figured out how to deal with this on a daily basis, but if something now struck them as out of place, something that made the hairs at the back of their neck stand up, it had to be significant.

The Avengers knew that, judging by the way the discussion about it was handled and also by the way Natasha had considered his outside perspective. Since last night James had become aware he hadn't made enough use of that, he could have lain in wait and figured it out before now. But then, he'd had no clue before, no inkling of how far the situation reached into the lives and recent past of all of them. Except him.

Natasha had been right: he was the outsider, he didn't live at the Tower and maybe that was the only reason he had seen what he had. James had never even considered magic to be real, but for a long time he had been what mothers warned their children about, made seasoned men quiver in their boots. Maybe he could relate. An assassin was trained to see through any sort of disguise, to recognize targets by the curl of their lip or the way their hand held the stem of a wineglass. He understood nothing of magic or immortality; everything that lives is born and must die. 

Two nights and days of lying in wait in the same position, shifting only when absolutely necessary to keep the blood flowing to his extremities until he finally found an opening. Sleep was a distant memory, food and water an unnecessary luxury, although enough water was puddled on the roof from the unhalting rain and running down his face. The drop to the roof below him was soundless in the night and he used the knife to prick the skin where a downward thrust would rupture a kidney and puncture the large intestine; not a killing blow but painful and dangerous nonetheless.

"You're a dead man walking," James growled, his voice extra rough from not using it for a few days.

The other man removed his hands from the pockets of his trousers, everything about him miraculously dry where James was dripping wet. It wasn't a gesture of surrender, just a show of good faith. 

"Funny you should say that," was the answer and when he turned around, James got his first personal look at Loki, who was Thor's little brother. "Supposedly, so are you."

Too easy. That was the summary of James bringing Loki into the Tower. Even with the man's glamor not working on James, finding him, bringing him, all of it was too easy. He'd expected a fight, that cunning mind he'd heard about at work trying to confuse and fool him, but nothing. Loki had agreed to be escorted to the Tower, enter it, face the group upstairs. James didn't consider that a particularly good idea and asked JARVIS to get Tony and Bruce downstairs and make it urgent; he figured those two might be the best equipped for a mental battle with the trickster god.

When they stepped out of the elevator Tony looked like he'd actually been asleep for once and James was almost sorry, but it couldn't be helped. "Okay One Armed Wonder, I don't know what is so urgent you can't have private time with the other frozen wonderboy upst—"

Tony blinked three times and then turned to Bruce. "I see dead people."

"That force is strong in both of us," Bruce answered, staring at Loki instead of looking at Tony. 

James had been awake too many hours to deal with this now, he had that luxury now to be debriefed tomorrow, to get sleep instead of being put back in cryo and he intended to take full advantage of it. "I handled your stalker situation, don't say I never brought you a present. You take it from here." 

Maybe it wasn't fair, but few things in war were and James was done with this. Or so he thought when he crawled into bed next to Steve, his friend's arm dropping around him almost instantly. 

"Bucky?" Steve murmured, rousing only for a moment to accommodate for a second body and slot them together.

James yawned. "Sleep. I brought your stalker in, I haven't slept in 82 hours, I earned it."

Of course, he should have known that would achieve the exact opposite. Steve's eyes flew open and he shook James' shoulder. "You— What? How … who?"

Sighing, James propped himself up on his elbow and ordered the lights to come on. He wanted to look Steve in the eye when he said, "Loki."

Two seconds later Steve was out of bed and pulling on the metal arm, urging him, "He's dead, it can't be Loki, it has to be a trap."

"Steve—"

"Where is he?" Steve wanted to know, pulling on a t-shirt that had lain discarded on the floor.

Groaning, James rolled back out of bed and rubbed his eyes. "Downstairs, I left him with Tony and Bruce."

"Come," Steve ordered, but not the way Captain America usually ordered, but the way Steve had when they were little and all James could do was roll his eyes and think about how he really didn't deserve all of this crap.

***

It was a strange sense of déjà vu, the trickster god in Stark Tower, even if today it wasn't in the living quarters. Tony wasn't entirely sure what to make of him, because this time he wasn't mind-controlled and he was uncharacteristically, infuriatingly silent. He was dressed in his customary greens and blacks; leather, fabric, metal, but no helmet and no weapons that were overtly visible.

"You threw me out of a window," Tony said, because even Bruce didn't seem to have a good opening for any kind of discussion. What else could they do, wait for Thor to wake up and find them in a standoff position?

Loki raised his chin, just enough to make it a gesture of defiance. "Do you want an apology for it?" he asked in return, voice even but far from playful and his smile seemed constipated, forced.

In that moment the elevator opened again and rushing out came Steve, followed by a yawning Barnes, who had changed into sweats that were a bit too wide and a bit too long for him. "It's really him?" 

"Told you," Barnes grumbled and leaned against a wall. At the same time, he lost nothing of his deadliness and Tony had no doubts he could spring into action on a split seconds' notice. Still, Tony ignored both of them.

"I'm not sure I would accept one," he told Loki, trying to get a proper read on him. The smile on the man's face only turned more sardonic. "What's your deal? You don't have an army now, as far as anyone in two realms is concerned you're dead, there is no leverage of any kind."

"Tony," Bruce warned from the background and Tony knew what he wanted to say. Don't give him ideas, don't put words into his mouth, don't make it easier for him than it already was to exploit their lingering misgivings about him. 

Steve stepped forward, crossed his arms over his chest. "Why did you come to Earth?"

But Loki ignored both of them; his gaze slid over where Barnes was leaning against the wall, who might as well have been sleeping with his eyes downcast, and his sardonic smile faltered. Still he kept his silence. 

Tony felt Bruce step up beside him and said, "JARVIS, maybe it's time we got Thor down here."

Under ordinary circumstances Tony wouldn't have agreed, Loki needed to be kept away from society at large and Thor in particular, too much had gone down on Earth and in Asgard over the last few years. But Tony's life had stopped being ordinary a long time ago, and something was going on here that none of them seemed to be able to judge properly and aside form Bruce, Thor was the only one who could contain his brother. Not for a minute would Tony believe Barnes would have been able to handle an Asgardian, or a Frost Giant as it were, if he didn't let him. 

"Yes, Dr. Banner," JARVIS responded.

From the corner of his eye, Tony caught Barnes raising his head. "Natasha and Clint, too. Don't tell anyone why though, we don't want to start a panic and for Thor to turn down the Tower." 

"Certainly, Sergeant."

"Might as well have everyone here," Tony agreed. Except Wilson, who had gone to visit his mother to get away from the stalking. "Get the party started."

Steve rolled his eyes at him and Tony grinned in response, definitely noticing that little indulgent half-smile on Barnes' face. Oh, how much he would like to tease these two about their dynamics, but right now they needed all their attentions on their unexpected guest.

"Tony is there a containment unit in the Tower?" Steve asked, clearly formulating plans.

Before he could answer though, the elevator doors opened against and Thor stepped out, chest naked and in sweats that had to be one of Clint's practical jokes for they were covered in race cars. Within a heartbeat, Steve stood in Thor's way, arms outstretched as if he wanted to stop an upcoming truck (which maybe wasn't so far off). Meanwhile, Thor's eyes had gone from confused to shocked and huge between seeing all of them and spotting his dead brother. 

"Loki," he said and made to shove Steve out of the way none too gently. He would have succeeded, too, if Barnes hadn't pulled Steve out of the way in the same second, berating him about higher powers and how some people never learned. 

Tony's attention was pulled back to the two brothers, where Thor had stormed towards his only sibling, the one he'd thought dead. For reasons both understandable and foreign, Loki seemed apprehensive as he acknowledged, "Brother."

Two things happened at once: Natasha and Clint stepped out of the elevator, took in the situation and Natasha snapped three words in Russian, maybe Russian, and Barnes responded in kind, with Clint and Steve nodding along (was Tony the only one who didn't understand that language these days and why was Steve understanding Russian anyway? At least Bruce looked suitably confused.), while Thor asked, hopefully, plaintively, "How?" and "Why, why like this?". He stared at his brother as if he'd seen a ghost. Which, truth be told, he probably had just as much as all of them. With the small exception that none of them had seen Loki die with their own eyes.

Reaching towards his brother, Thor stopped himself before laying a hand on his shoulder.

Barnes didn't move from his spot where he had maneuvered Steve slightly behind him, Clint and Natasha off to the side standing in Bruce's way, when he said, "Thor, the world thought us dead."

"Is it so hideous, brother?" Loki inquired, cold and calculating, as if that was exactly the reaction he'd been expecting. And feared. "Can you not stand it, confronted with reality like this?"

Tony blinked. Non-sequiturs weren't the man's MO, usually. 

"No," Thor answered and put a hand to the back of his brother's neck and pulled him into an embrace that none of the baseline human in the room would probably have survived. Loki, to his credit, looked as if he really didn't care for his brother's actions, but he also didn't resist. This wasn't the warrior's embrace Tony was used to from Thor, this was about something lost and found that should never have returned. "You have always been my brother."

Silence fell for several moments in which no one really seemed to know how to react. Bruce was mouthing something ending in 'syndrome' at him, but Tony only frowned at him; Natasha was conferring with Clint in hand gestures. 

Eventually though, when Thor didn't seem like he was about to let go anytime soon, it was evident that someone else would need to make the first step. "Is it him?" Tony asked quietly.

Thor loosened his hold but put both hands on his brother's shoulders before turning around to them. If Tony looked closely, he could make out tear streaks on his face, and it probably should have been answer enough. 

"Don't you see?" When no one gave any indication of understanding what he was talking about, Thor shook his head. "It is him. You have my word. How did you find him?"

That was the cue for Barnes to come forward; he didn't look at all tired, just alert and deliberating about every move. "He was your stalker," he said and looked closer at Loki, cataloging his appearance and movement. The trickster god meanwhile stared into space over Thor's shoulder. "I guess it explains a few elements about the how. I'm not sure about the why."

Barnes shifted his weight minutely when suddenly Loki locked eyes with him, but the overconfident smirk was absent and the assassin held his position. 

"Thor," he prompted.

Thor let out a breath. "I will find out, Bucky the Winter Soldier. Loki, come upstairs. You shall tell me everything."

The sneer on Loki's face was at least familiar. "Are you sure you can handle the truth? Because you will not like it."

But his brother didn't dignify that with an answer, instead he moved one hand to the back of his neck again and guided him to the elevator. Once the two Asgardians were gone, Tony looked around into tired faces.

"Does anyone feel like sleep? Yeah, me neither." On a night when he'd actually felt he could manage a few uninterrupted hours and now and what a shame that was.

Finally, they congregated on the common floor around the huge dining room table and JARVIS was brewing them the strongest coffee traditional roasting processes were able to produce. 

"Why do you think he's here?" Bruce asked.

"To taunt us?" Tony offered, but didn't quite believe it himself.

Natasha frowned. "Why would he risk it?"

Clint was massaging his left hand absently. "He's different."

"Is he always blue?" Barnes asked and that silenced everyone. "What did I say?"

Steve put a hand on Barnes' forearm. "He's not blue, Buck."

His answer was a confused look. "Yeah, he was. At least when he was standing downstairs with Thor he was, not when I was bringing him in though. Isn't he a Frost Giant? He's one even in legends, too."

The atmosphere turned uncomfortable as everyone exchanged glances. It was Bruce who spoke up, "We know he's an illusionist. Let's wait for what Thor will have to say. We still don't know how he came back to life, if he was ever dead. Or where he has been all this time, it seems unlikely he would have gone undetected in Asgard."

"I read your reports," Barnes said. "You all agree he was under the control of the Tesseract and Clint and Erik Selvig both go further than that; you mention Loki's control was not as absolute as it seemed." 

Clint nodded. "I think no creature of the nine realms was ever meant to go to the place the Chitauri come from and from what I suspect, not that I was thinking all that much when I was under his spell mind you, they were using him as much as he was using us. Best case scenario, Loki was a bridgehead to our dimension and the planets apparently connected to Earth." He looked around the table before exchanging a long glance with Barnes and something unsaid seemed to pass between them. "Worst case scenario, they broke him, put him back together and broke him some more before offering him a salvation that would never come."

That was a somewhat more grim assessment than Tony would have expected after New York, after London, after the weeks of feeling wrong in his own skin. When they'd seen Thor and Loki off after the destruction the Chitauri had wreaked in New York, he'd been gagged and seemed unrepentant, and Tony had assumed Clint was traumatized both by his experiences and by Coulson's death. He'd never bothered with the reports even when the files had come online, he'd been _there_ , he knew what had happened, there were more interesting tidbits about SHIELD that had needed studying. 

"That's not an excuse," Steve said, although not as vehemently as he would have a two years, a year ago. 

Natasha took an audible breath but didn't say anything.

Barnes made a fist with his left hand and looked at it for a long moment. "A shattered mind, it gets … complicated. We should trust Thor to be the judge of Loki's mind as it is now; he didn't hesitate to have him imprisoned before when it was necessary."

Not even Steve mentioned that he'd also set him free again, only to lose him to death this time. Presumed death. Faked death. Because Loki had also presumably helped save all of them and Jane Foster.

"So," Tony took up the thread, "who wants to play some Go Fish?" No way in hell he'd play poker with three assassins and the man who could keep the Hulk under control. 

Even their little menagerie of battle-tested individuals could only pretend so long not to wait for what was coming though, and could only spend so much time with each other outside of immediate danger before getting on each other's nerves. Too many Type-A personalities. 

Tony fled to the lab and dragged Bruce with him; if neither of them would get any sleep anyway, they might as well do work. Although Bruce didn't know it, Tony was still looking into what had happened during his accident that had prompted him to give in to the rage and made him run. That whole project was curious, and even the SHIELD takedown hadn't revealed as much as anyone might have hoped. The whiff of secrecy was strong for something that was so definitely shut down. 

But now was not the time to talk about that; Tony wanted to know how much power various joints in the body could take and at what point it would be too much. The suits were reinforced at all joints, especially the knees because landing and taking off had always been especially strenuous on them. Still, the reactors channeled a lot of raw energy and the human body had a load limit. Tony was willing to put up with only so much long-term damage that wasn't instant death.

He sent the equation taking all variables into account to the tablet Bruce had in his hands and saw as his friend frowned at it. "Between the Winter Soldier and Loki, we sure live in interesting times."

"You know that's a Chinese curse, don't you?" Bruce inquired but didn't even look up. After two years on and off at the Tower, he was apparently at ease, even though Tony knew how close to the surface the Hulk lingered. Still, Tony was glad for it; he liked Bruce and the man's mind was brilliant and deserved to spread out, not be delegated to an emerging nation doctoring on the less fortunate.

Tony grinned, raked a hand through his hair and knew it was standing up on end afterward. The tablet pinged and he peeked at the equation Bruce had sent back corrected for … age. "Hey!"

"You wanted an honest assessment and none of us are getting any younger," Bruce answered and pushed his glasses up his nose. "Even those of us who get stuck into a solid block of ice for a lifetime."

That startled a laugh out of Tony. "What about you, does the other guy stop that, or is being on the lam keeping you young?"

"You know." The other man paused, stared at the tablet for a moment before looking back up and continuing his sentence, "I don't really know. I guess I should figure that out at some point. I thought you stopped research on the Extremis virus." 

The last sentence referred to what Tony had sent his way in the past minute. "I did! I have! But it's an option. It's not even deadly anymore, one thousand percent less explosions!"

Tony had to correct what was wrong with the virus in order to cure Pepper and Stark Industries had then given it the last finish to store it away perfect and shiny in the vault to never see the light of day again. Still, years back, the palladium in the reactor had almost killed Tony. The use of the suits that had become an extension of his own body had exacerbated that, and while that was not an issue anymore, if Extremis in its perfect form could prevent something like that from happening again he didn't see a reason not to use it.

Bruce didn't seem to concur, however. "This thing has been proven to be highly volatile, and you think you can control it?"

"It's perfectly fine now, it's doing exactly what it was designed to do!"

Shaking his head, Bruce shoved the tablet at him. "Do you know what it takes for a virus to revert back to its wildtype? One mutation, Tony! That's why researchers need special training before they work with viruses derived from HIV for completely unrelated purposes, because one stupid little coincidence can make it turn back into something dangerous!"

True was, Bruce was the man who had the training and the experience and knew what he was talking about. Tony wasn't a wet lab guy, but he wasn't above pointing out that there was a reason why scientists didn't usually use themselves as test subjects, even though he knew it was below the belt. And he would have said all of those words if Barnes hadn't decided to step into the lab in that moment.

"James, what do you think about the Extremis virus being in active use?" Bruce asked without stopping a beat after his tirade at Tony.

A frown appeared on Barnes' face as if he was trying to figure out what they were even talking about. He'd said he'd read the files and reports, and Tony knew AIM had been an entry in the SHIELD database. The frown cleared within a second and the man shrugged. "Could it restore my arm?"

Later when they had all settled down, Tony would have to ask JARVIS for a picture of Bruce's flabbergasted face, but for now he just turned around to Barnes and said, "Yes."

The assassin seemed to consider, closed his eyes briefly and smiled, then looked at them again. 

"Still seems fucking risky and I wouldn't let anyone inject me with that stuff. But what do I know, they used to strap me to a chair and do their funny little experiments on me whether I agreed or not." He smiled at them again, but this one had teeth and when Tony glanced at Bruce, he looked just as chagrined as Tony felt. So maybe Barnes could lord that over them. "You're a moron."

"Thanks, Barnes, just what I needed to hear," Ton quipped back. Barnes raised an appreciative eyebrow and raised the corner of his mouth. "Why are you here, I recall you mentioning something about sleep at least three times since you brought us a present shaped like the god of mischief and trickery."

Where other people might have yawned, Barnes merely flopped down on his customary stool, but contrary to other days didn't start undressing. "Steve won't be sleeping before the Loki situation hasn't resolved itself. Which is why I'm going up to talk to Thor and the little brother, because _I_ sure as fuck would like to sleep at some point, thank you very much. In a few days I'll be pushing even my limits and if it turns out that what we have with Loki is an actual situation, I'd prefer to do it on a good night's rest."

Shrugging, Tony made a gesture that encompassed the lab and the Tower. "If you want to be undisturbed, and Cap's pacing keeps you awake, you can have a whole floor to yourself."

"And if the Tower runs out of spare floors, Tony will just add a few more on top," Bruce interjected and Tony couldn't dispute that.

But Barnes shook his head. "I have a hotel room," he stated, showing that being undisturbed clearly wasn't the sole point. 

Tony wondered, had wondered really, whether that was still a fact or whether he'd moved in, or Steve had moved him in, without clothing it in so many words. For sure, the man was here often enough and while Tony didn't keep exact tabs on him, he wouldn't be able to say when had been the last night Barnes had slept outside the Tower and Steve's bed. "Is that still a reality?"

Barnes didn't even dignify that with a comment, though. "Steve is not going to let this go, and neither are any of you if your shutting yourselves up here instead of going back to bed is an indication. At least me Loki never tried to kill, so I'll go."

"I'm not sure that's the best idea, James," Bruce said kindly and Barnes shrugged. So that, too, wasn't the point. Growing up in the Stark household, Tony had heard stories for most of his early years, but the SHIELD data had not been the only ones to be released, the dump had gone down as far as the old SSR files, at least the ones that had been digitized. A lot of that had been formerly classified material that even the Smithsonian curators had not gotten their hands on. For all intents and purposes, Barnes had not just been Steve's friend, he'd been his keeper and now didn't want to leave the man out of sight if the situation was not clearly labeled safe.

"What would you say?" Tony asked, genuinely curious. 

Barnes shrugged once more. "He has to have a reason to come here, to stalk all of you and Thor in the way he has when all he would have to do would be to keep out of your way and live his life in peace. I don't think it's spite."

No, that had not been the vibe Tony had gotten from Loki either, which probably should have made all of them think before this. No one—maybe not even Thor—knew what was going on in his head, what his motives were, but to risk his freedom and ultimately his life, it had to be something significant. Or at least it had to be more than just showing his brother up. To Tony it was no surprise that Barnes had recognized that right away and was the one who was proposing that as a solution now, he was the one who had gone through the same decision-making process recently.

"Why would he tell you?" Bruce posed a valid question, but Tony had analyzed that once before.

"He's a diva," he told the two other men. 

Patience was a virtue of Barnes where Tony wondered whether he'd always had it or whether it was something that the Winter Soldier had instilled in him. "That's part of it. He managed to outsmart everyone; his brother, his father, all of Asgard and the nine realms. He needs an audience who isn't Thor, and that's where I come in."

"I wonder if it would help to have Sam back here," Bruce said considering.

Tony was still staring at Barnes after his bold assertion. While Wilson certainly had the training to deal with personal crises and was a professional-

"Sam is too much like Steve." Barnes shook his head, interrupting the thought. "Why do you think they get on so well? This is not hit first talk later, and we're not at war in need of a diplomatic mission. This is a quick in and out, I've done this dozens of times in the last decades."

The Winter Soldier had. Hopefully this time it would happen without quite as much death, they'd all had enough of that in the recent past, including Loki. But Barnes was right about one fact, even if he said it in different words: Loki didn't have his measure, knew nothing about him, and a spy might just be what they needed. In many ways, Loki was the typical villain who spilled his plot to the secret agent strapped to a laboratory table—and wasn't that a nice analogy for past events—even if deciphering his plans took thinking around two corners.

Tony shrugged. "Can we stop you?"

"I'm almost sure the other guy could," Bruce interjected, but then raised his hands and smiled. "Don't worry, I don't think we'll find out tonight. Today." 

Barnes looked at both of them in turn and rolled his eyes. "Don't tell Steve," he said before heading for the door. "If you do tell him, don't let him come after me."

When their newest assassin had taken his leave, Tony looked over at Bruce. " _Do_ we tell Captain Stubborn With The Chiseled Jaw?"

For a long moment Bruce looked at the door through which Barnes had vanished. "No," he finally said. "I'm curious to see how this works out."

"And here I thought you weren't into behavioral sciences," Tony told him with a smile. "So, if you want to keep Extremis in the vault, help me find a factor that mitigates your insistence on adding age to my beautifully balanced equation."

Laughing, Bruce picked up the tablet again and started sending projection to the holoscreens.

On the bright side, they didn't hear any explosions over the next few hours. Tony was almost a bit disappointed. If any of them had counted on a quick resolution though, they were equally disappointed.

***

It took some effort to charm JARVIS into taking James up to Thor's floor. Apparently, he had asked not to let anyone but him and his brother inside and JARVIS was following protocol. But as much as James might like the AI, it was a computer and could be convinced with logic and James was nothing if not persistent, a skill honed in long years of being Steven Rogers' best friend. The truly sad facet of this was that steady drops could hollow even a stone as steady as an AI, but wouldn't do anything against Steve's thick skull.

When James stepped out of the elevator cabin on Thor's floor, he was greeted by silence. He wasn't sure what he had expected, bellowing arguments or outright fighting. Not silence, though. Scoping out all the niches and dark corners, James stepped in further. Thor's furniture were all low and comfortable, at least no one would be hiding beneath them. When he entered what was the living room in Steve's place, he saw the two brothers standing in the middle of it, Thor's hands on Loki's shoulders, looking intently at him. Loki looked back, defiance in his face and James knew he didn't do it because he wanted to. His skin still had a faintly blue sheen. 

"Hello," James said in as neutral a tone as he was able to and waited for Thor to tear his gaze away from his brother. When Loki turned around to glare at him, his skin was the normal color of flesh. 

"Bucky," Thor said, "why are you here?"

"Your … friends on Earth are even more intrusive than the ones you made in Asgard, brother," Loki answered in his stead, but his voice sounded almost amused.

Narrowing his eyes, James tried to read more from their body language, but other than the fact that these two were comfortable with each other he could read nothing from them. "What's going on here?"

"I fail I see how this concerns you," Loki answered, one eyebrow raised. 

James crossed his arms over his chest. "This concerns me because you have everyone else in this place ready to blast you out of this realm and I think it's very tiring."

"Well, forgive me if my presence is robbing you of your precious sleep," Loki countered and crossed his arms in turn. "You humans—"

"Loki!" Thor interrupted and pulled his brother back by the shoulder, rougher than James would have expected, but Loki only smirked. James narrowed his eyes. "This is why you should have left us alone, Bucky, Loki has lost his manners."

"Assuming he ever had some." The answer to that was a brilliant smile from Loki, and suddenly James understood what Thor saw when he looked at his brother. And what he had lost. James remembered Steve as a kid too well, small and frail and perpetually sick, but with a temper to match anyone twice his size and a thirst for adventure. When Steve started to grin like a loon they always got into trouble; James had never faulted him. He wondered how often Loki and Thor had gotten into trouble and how often Loki had talked them out of it.

Now Loki pulled away from Thor just enough to shake his hand, and directed his smile at James. "Oh, but I beg to differ. You see, my brother has never known as many manners as I have forgotten in our lifetime. It's the huge tragedy of my existence, the way he needed twice as long as me to learn to sit at table and to not embarrass our parents and me with his lack of court etiquette. Maybe that should have clued me in to my true heritage much sooner."

"Is that why you're blue?" James inquired, veering away from a topic that led nowhere and would only get Thor worked up. Now he was curious however, to hear more about the childhood of two gods. "Because you realized your true heritage?"

"Loki is my brother!" Thor challenged and stepped up, eyes narrowed.

James raised his hands to indicate acquiescence, but kept an eye on Loki. The almost playful look was gone and Loki's eyes turned hard instantly. Caught in the act and on the defense, that's what that look was. James kept looking at him, trying to gauge his reaction and get a better read on him, which was surprisingly hard.

"I know," James told Thor, turning his gaze to him. "I read the reports, I know what happened. I'm sorry."

Thor waited a heartbeat, then nodded and James took that as leave to ask more. Both men could stop him if they wanted to.

"It doesn't change the facts, though." He frowned. Steve had been confused when he had mentioned Loki's complexion, as if that had never entered the scope of his thinking and— "I wasn't supposed to see it, but none of the others _can_ see it. Isn't that it?"

Thor was visibly looking for an explanation when Loki pressed his lips together and finally said, "Expectations."

When James didn't understand and looked to Thor for help, the god of thunder shrugged. "You have not met before, what you see cannot match what's in your mind. This has never happened before, it's—" 

He shook his head.

Magic again. James was coming to hate everything that entailed, even though it was such an integral part of the men in front of him that for them it didn't matter; they used it as Tony did his mechanical toys and James used the arm. He saw Loki's fist clench once, twice and Thor reaching out without making contact. The way Loki exhibited his defiance puzzled James until he remembered him asking Thor whether it was 'hideous'. At the time James hadn't realized what that meant, now it was hitting him like a brick to the back of the head.

He turned to Loki, his face schooled into neutrality. "The only issue is, it's not your heritage, is it?"

Thor insisted he was his brother. If James had read all the reports correctly, Loki had never spoken of himself as a frost giant and wanted to be one as much as James wanted to be the Winter Soldier. Yet neither of them would ever be rid of their ghosts. The baleful stare Loki directed at him told him all he needed to know.

No one said a word for several moments before James decided he had come here, he had to be the one to make the next step. He deliberately turned to Loki. "Why are you here?"

But Loki kept his silence and when James turned to Thor, the other man shook his head. "It is not—"

He interrupted himself as both brothers looked at the window front, where a huge black bird had landed on the railing of the balcony-slash-veranda outside. Thor's face darkened. "Bucky the Winter Soldier, I have to go and speak with the Bifröst's sentry. I cannot take my brother and I cannot let him roam free. Will you stand guard until I return?"

James glanced at Loki—who was rolling his eyes—then frowned at Thor. "Why me?"

"He means you have no reason to kill me. Unlike his other friends." Loki's voice was back to a pleasant timbre with utterly false cheer. Thor shrugged in a gesture that was neither denial nor confirmation, but James suspected his brother had the truth of it. 

James was far from convinced he'd make a good keeper for the god of mischief. Still, he'd prefer that over having to deal with another standoff situation. Once he nodded his agreement, Thor exchanged a long look with Loki and James couldn't even start to guess what passed between them. Then the god of thunder stepped outside and was instantly collected by an energy beam. 

When he had vanished, James shook his head took a seat on one of the low couches. "Okay now. Tell me the truth."

Loki raised a delicate eyebrow. "What makes you think I will tell you anything?"

"You came here with a purpose. This is the last place you should be willing to go to, by all accounts." Trying to reason with Loki was probably not a good idea, but James had time to kill and might actually learn something. 

Instead of saying a single word, though, Loki sat down on the other side, but when he raised his head to look at James, it wasn't Loki looking at him but Steve. Now that was a neat trick. James raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing?" Steve asked. "No reaction?"

"You're not nearly reckless enough to even pretend to be Steve," James mocked, figuring he wasn't in any imminent danger. When Thor came back and James hat met with an unnatural end, the pool of suspects was small. Outright murder also didn't seem to be Loki's style, no matter what he'd done under the influence of mind control.

Steve smirked in a way James had never seen Steve smirk. "I dropped down a chasm into an abyss once."

"So did I," James answered and leaned forward, squinting to see through the illusion. A slight flicker, but it was still Steve's form. "Also, I thought you were adamant on Thor dropping you. How much energy does that cost you, anyway?"

That was a gamble, but from all James had seen over the past hours, that seemed what it came down to. Clint saying he was different. The involuntary glimpses of Loki's non-Asgardian form were all but unheard of, according to Thor; Thor's compulsion to reach out and touch—while understandable under the circumstances—seemed laced with something else; Loki's forced admittance about expectations. Something was foul, and while James didn't know a lot about magic, he couldn't imagine it coming free of cost. Loki didn't wince when he said it, but he dropped the glamour and glared at James from behind his own eyes.

"What is it you think you know?"

"About you?" James raised the corner of his. "Only what's written. Which is considerable, SHIELD was almost as good as the Nazis were about documentation."

"Humans," Loki sneered. He got up and went to the window, looking outside. James was coiled to react should he make any move to flee, but the man just raised his hand and touched the glass. "What are you good at but killing each other?" James said nothing, just kept watching as the other man stared out the window—an empty stare—until he turned back to him, expression settled into consideration. "Our mother died."

The statement was simple enough, but James felt he had to react. "And then you died."

Loki acknowledged that with a mere nod. "How do you think Thor would have fared if his father had also perished? To be king of Asgard, protector of the nine realms, while grieving for what he has known as family."

A realization dawned on James and with that some details fell into place.

"It turns out," Loki continued with a small, bitter smile on his face, "Odin's magic had its hooks far deeper in me than I could ever have known."

"You need Thor," James guessed, but was careful to make his conviction show. He would win nothing with a man like Loki by being soft and undetermined. 

Loki paused for a second that was heavy with meaning but might have been simple hesitancy, then allowed, "I've come to my brother, because he is Asgard's mightiest warrior and Asgard needs to be sure of him."

"You mean to tell me that was ever in question?" James raised an eyebrow. "Maybe you need him as your brother, but you need Thor."

"Preposterous. Odin stole my birthright from me and gave it to Thor; if anyone else could wield the hammer, I would go to him. Since that is not the case I'm settled with that oaf, at least I can make use of his misguided affection for me." Not once has Loki made eye contact during his tirade. James had seldomly see someone lose control of a situation this quickly and now he wasn't surprised anymore the Avengers had managed to re-take New York. 

He nodded, doubting Loki himself believed what he said. "Of course."

If not for the energy beam appearing outside he might have added more, but it was not a discussion he could have in front of Thor. Although James would have to ask Thor for the details as he saw them and make his own truth from that. When Thor stepped back into the room, his eyes went straight for his brother, checking him over.

"Thor. Has Heimdall told you the shocking truths?" Loki's voice was bitter, but James looked for Thor's reaction, because Loki would fluff his feather's whether anyone paid attention to him or not. 

Thor knew better than to let anything show on his face, but he smiled with genuine affection. "Heimdall has confirmed all you have said."

"Well," Loki answered and got up, "then I guess I am free to go."

With that, Thor's face fell slightly for a second and James narrowed his eyes. "Will you?" he asked and smiled a smile with too many teeth when the god of mischief shot him a heated glance. "I found you out, Loki. I understand, I also needed the person I liked best in the world when I finally found myself. Thor, I'll catch you at some point, I'd like some answers."

With a last nod he made to leave, but Thor stepped into his way quickly and put both hands on his shoulders, not even hesitating when he found metal on the left. "Bucky, I thank you. We shall talk, later."

Wondering whether Thor had a truly insincere bone in his body, James closed his eyes, shook his head and used the cybernetic hand to grasp Thor's wrist in turn. "Yes. But now I need sleep, your brother has kept me awake long enough."

The idea to fall asleep standing up in the elevator had merit, but probably didn't serve for the few seconds it took to get to Steve's floor. Predictably, the man was pacing a furrow into the carpet, looking up sharply when James stepped out of the elevator.

"What happened, where did you go? JARVIS wouldn't tell me anything and Tony said he hadn't seen you. I thought you were gone." Steve looked worried and James couldn't help but smile at him, reminded of all the times _he_ had gone out looking for whether Steve had ended up in some ditch.

"Tony lied to you, because I asked him to," he told his friend and walked past him towards the bedroom. "You really need to learn to tell when people do that. I went to talk to Thor and our visitor."

Steve hurried up to catch up with him on the short way to the back of the apartment. "You talked to Loki?!"

"Sort of." James started to take off his shirt. He really wanted a shower, too, but the bed would have to do for now. 99 hours and counting and he began to feel he was pushing his limits, his thoughts felt more sluggish than usual, and a low-grade headache he usually associated with hangovers had settled in his temples. "Mostly he made snide comments about himself and I listened."

His jeans landed on the floor followed by his socks as he sat on the bed and then just thumped down on the pillow. 

"Bucky, what—" Steve started, still standing on the other side of the bed. 

James rolled over and silenced him with a glance. "Steve, he's in trouble and he needs his brother. I'm not sure what's the issue exactly, and whether it could affect us, but that's what it is. He wants his brother and I think all of us can get some sleep while those two work it out."

Blinking, Steve opened his mouth to say something more, but James continued, "If you say one more word I'll get up and go to my own bed. Or ask Tony for a floor, he offered me one. Of course, you could also just _come here_ and get some sleep."

For a long moment Steve merely stood rooted in place, clearly considering whether Loki was worth the fight he was starting. While he still deliberated, James closed his eyes and started to doze, secure enough in the knowledge that Steve would see reason eventually. When clothes rustled, proving him right, he smiled and scooted closer towards Steve when he felt the mattress dip, falling asleep with his friend's warm breath at the back of his neck.

Double digit hours later, James had left Steve sleeping and was foraging for food on the common floor. If he was staying here on a more regular basis he'd have to convince JARVIS to fill up the fridge. The setup was nice and since Steve's floor was, well, Steve's, he might as well stake out his own domain here, considering most of the time it went unused. He still didn't plan to be in the Tower long-term, but he felt good about a place to come back to.

He had come up with beer and cold pizza when he felt eyes on him. Peering over the door of the fridge, he spotted Natasha casually leaning in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. "Do you always sneak up on people?"

"It's my job," she told him. "I thought Steve might have mentioned that much."

"Steve tries very hard not to mention any of the stupid stuff he's doing for SHIELD." He hopped on the counter and chewed on the pizza. "Your file was more illuminating."

He didn't have to ask why she had done it, even if it incriminated herself. She had been Red Room, and for better or worse, James knew what that meant. Her loyalty first and foremost lay with herself, yet on the other hand it was unquestioned when she chose to extend it. Not that James counted himself in that circle, but Steve very clearly was and for the moment, he probably enjoyed the dubious benefit of the doubt by being with Steve. 

The slight narrowing of her eyes was the only reaction he got, though.

"I'm not sure you're the guy Steve told us about," she eventually admitted. "I'm not sure whether that's a bad thing."

James snorted and shook his head. "You know what it's like with memories."

"Eidetic, in both your cases I would assume," she deadpanned and James gave her a rueful smile.

"For the most part. Steve has always exhibited a remarkable skill at selective perception, though, even after he volunteered as guinea pig." The nod and exasperated inward breath he got told him all he needed to know about her experiences with Steve in the past few years. "I am who I can be."

Natasha smiled at him. "Aren't we all?"

For a big guy, Thor moved surprisingly quiet and they both startled—albeit tried not to let it show—when he suddenly appeared behind Natasha, even though James should have seen him coming. 

The god of thunder only gave both of them a tired smile, got a beer out of the fridge and walked towards the dining room without a word to either of them. James exchanged a look with Natasha and saw the same curiosity and need for answers in her eyes. Without discussing it further he got two bottles out of the fridge and handed one to her when she walked by him. They had crown caps, but the arm's plates could be used for many things and he got a slightly impressed raise of an eyebrow from Natasha, at which he grinned. 

Both of them sobered when they spotted Thor at the table, looking drawn and tired. He hadn't looked like this half a day ago and James wondered what had happened. 

"Where's Mjölnir?" Natasha asked gently and let herself sink down on the chair next to Thor in a calculated move projecting caring. James didn't doubt Natasha genuinely liked and cared about Thor, still she was trained to respond to unexpected situations and calculate accordingly. Someone else with ghosts. 

James stayed a few feet away, to remain nonthreatening.

Thor took a breath and let it out slowly. "Guarding Loki. He is asleep, I did not want to wake him or have him think I … abandoned him."

After a moment, Natasha put a hand on Thor's arm, but her eyes searched for James'. He shrugged, not having gotten the chance to talk to anyone but Steve about his visit with the brothers. Even with his friend, he'd kept the terms broad, if true; what it came down to was that Loki had come to Earth to find his brother, for whatever purpose. 

Thor finished his beer in two quick swallows and James got him another without asking, also retrieving the scotch and three tumblers. He had a feeling they'd need it. Thor's glance graced Natasha before it landed on James, and he said with his voice rough, "My father is dead."

From his peripheral vision, James saw Natasha's eyes widen in genuine surprise and stare in turn at both of them. He had expected as much from his talk with Loki, the confirmation was still jarring. "Even the gods die, then."

The answer was a shake of head in denial. "We're not immortal. We are born, we die. My mother, my brother, my father."

"Loki?" Natasha inquired, calm and collected; if anyone was able to deal with unexpected situations it was a spy. 

Thor played with his hands, was quiet for a long moment. "He did not kill our father, he died from the wounds sustained at the battle for Asgard and from grief for our mother. No, Loki did what he thought he had to do. He evaded prison, but I can hardly fault him."

All the time, Thor had been speaking to the table top, while James and Natasha kept exchanging glances, and he saw his own questions mirrored in her eyes. Still, he had more information than she did and he'd need to use them. "He said he did it for you."

"Die? He saved my life, he saved Jane, but he deceived me nonetheless." Thor looked up, defiance in his eyes and James knew he wasn't broken. Struck and grieving for the father who had raised him, yes, but far from broken. "Bucky, you and Steve grew up as brothers, how would you have felt waking up and find him dead? Or you, Natasha, when Clint was under the influence of the Tessaract?"

"I think Steve has actually lived this," Natasha said and James tried to imagine Steve waking up and finding his whole world turned around and everyone he had ever known dead. James' situation had been different, at least he had known who to hate … and that Steve was alive. Thor acknowledged that with a nod. "Loki took your father's place? With his magic? Then why is he here and not resting on his laurels?"

"Loki said something about Odin's magic," James added for good measure, because he would never get a straight answer out of the god of mischief and his brother was the next best source.

"Our mother knew more about magic than me, but from what Loki told me and Heimdall confirmed this, when our father first took Loki from Jötunheim, his magic changed him. I don't remember Loki as anything but my brother, looking Asgardian like everyone else around us. Now with our father dead this appearance is slipping. Until now he always needed aids to appear Jötun. Not now." Thor didn't appear to be speaking to either of them, but that didn't mean Natasha or James were deterred.

Natasha opened the scotch and poured generous amounts for all of them. "He looks the same as before."

"Expectations," James murmured and Natasha frowned at him. "Loki said it. You see what you're supposed to see. I don't, not always, but I never met him before now. It's different when Thor's with him."

Thor nodded. "His powers are strong enough to fool humans. I know him, I see him as he is. He is better when I am with him."

"Like an empty battery." Natasha nodded her understanding and James wondered if maybe she didn't have it more correct than either she or Thor realized. Loki obviously blamed Odin for his appearance, but Loki had also grown up with Thor, and Loki also had suffered the loss of his mother, father and—by his own deceit—his brother. Appearing as Odin, Loki's interactions with other Asgardians would have changed, and then he had as much as admitted yesterday that keeping up a glamor didn't come free of cost. James wondered if events of the last few years had not simply been enough to wreak havoc on Loki's identity. Thor, on the other hand, was a fixed point in his life.

"He wasn't like that when he came here from the Chitauri though, was he?" James continued, because he had not been here then, but he'd seen the footage. He wanted to know. For good measure, he knocked back the scotch and gave everyone a refill; he wondered if the others—like himself—would have preferred something with a bit more bite, but they were exposed to Tony's tastes here. 

Thor didn't react at all except to empty his glass. Natasha had deliberately stilled and James tried to feel back to the moment he had started to remember Steve, tried to imagine knowing who he was while in the machine that had scrambled his brains for decades. For what it was worth, his memories of the first days were hazy and tinged with the pain of a missing limb; so far, he had refused to examine them further. 

"He was holding on to the only thing he knew," he answered his own question. 

The breath Thor took in answer was too deep to be regular and he got up and left them in the room without another word.

"Shit," James said emphatically. "Who do we have to tell so neither of us has to have that discussion with everyone in the Tower?"

"Clint," Natasha told him and topped off both their glasses again. "But believe it or not, we should tell Tony first."

James eyed the tumblers and sat down across from her. "How much of that do you need to drink until it's all on me?"

"I'm willing to try and drink you under the table, soldier boy." Natasha smirked in a way that made James' insides throb with dread and took two quick swallows. "Loki is the victim here? That's new."

James turned the glass in his hands and stared at the amber liquid inside. The Red Room trained their tools well, not a speck of self-pity to be found, and he wondered if Natasha had ever been in the position to consider herself a victim of anything. He hadn't, when he'd first woken up in in DC, Sergeant James B. Barnes 32557038 1917-1945, and come to New York. Tony had never treated him as a victim, merely as a curiosity that walked in and out of his life. Steve still looked at him in that way too often, as if James needed pity, when all of what had happened to him had only served the purpose to reunite them all these decades later. James didn't want to feel sorry for that. "I'm not sure that's the right word. Are you ready to demolish Tony's liquor stash?"

If they were caught up in this Asgardian family drama, they might as well do it mellow. They'd need to talk to Tony and Steve and then get everyone together to make a few decisions, but not tonight. Natasha raised one corner of her mouth, but shook her head before getting up in one fluid motion. "Another day, James. I'll see you tomorrow."

He toasted her with what was left of his drink and then slowly sipped. He needed to talk to Tony, it was his house and he had almost lost his life the last time Loki had been on Earth. And he'd need to convince Steve to curb his hostility and constant alertness in favor of waiting for the situation to resolve itself. For Loki to turn back into Odin and go back to Asgard, maybe take Thor with him, much as James liked the guy.

Shaking his head, he asked, "JARVIS, is anyone on the range?"

"No, Sergeant," the AI answered.

"Thank you, JARVIS." He needed to shoot something before he drew a gun on one of Steve's housemates the next time he saw any of them. That was probably frowned upon. Maybe he could find a new protection racket, at least that gave him something to do on the night’s sleep eluded him.

"You're welcome, Sergeant."

***

Loki had apparently come to stay. Tony felt conflicted about that. Once he had almost been nuked (quite literally) because of the guy, but now that he wasn't trying to actively take over the world, Loki wasn't entirely bad. Barnes and Romanoff had come to him a few days after Thor had secluded himself and his brother in his apartment and told him about everything that was rotten in the state of Asgard. Except that as far as anyone could determine, nothing had come through the void to annihilate Earth so far and matters in the other realm were stable. Whatever Loki was doing, he wasn't doing a bad job.

When everyone else learned about this, Thor confirmed the tale with his arms crossed over his chest while Loki sat in stone cold silence at the large table in the common room, purposely ignoring everyone.

"Heimdall confirmed the truth Loki's words and further that he let this pass for good reason," Thor finally finished. "He still maintains this ruse in Asgard even now."

"Why?" Tony challenged. "This Heimdall, why does he do this when his boss is dead and the traitor has usurped the throne?"

Steve frowned. "More interesting, why does no one question Odin's sudden absence?"

This roused Loki from his silent stupor and Tony decided he didn't even have to pretend to not watch him with interest. "No one questions Heimdall. With our mother dead and Thor absent, he is the highest authority that Asgard has until the return of an heir."

"Thor?" Bruce asked gently.

The god of thunder inhaled but was cut off by his brother, "Brother dearest made it clear that he has no interest in taking the throne."

After a moment Thor stepped up and laid a hand gently on his brother's shoulder. "Father had the tendency to fall into Odinsleep at rather inopportune moments. It is feasible to assume he might be overcome after the rebuilding of Asgard."

All of it, in the end, meant that Loki would stay until … possibly until he was fixed, if such a thing were possible. Until he did not turn blue anymore if he was out of Thor's company for more than a few hours or until Asgard was in trouble. When this would be the case or if it was even a possibility no one would speculate about, not even Thor when asked directly. 

And then nothing happened. For weeks. Barnes was in and out of the Tower, which made Steve prowl through the labs with an alternately hopeful and then long face; Clint spent the first week to stare at Loki where he spent his days sulking on the common floor. When Thor thought it prudent to let his brother out of his sight for any length of time at least. Most of those times Barnes made an appearance, tried to talk to Loki (who even responded on topics unrelated to his immediate condition), but as often as not he quickly vanished again, apparently he didn't like having an assassin staring at his back. Not that Tony could blame him. 

He wondered if it was an odd sort of socialization experiment. 

"So, is anyone hungry?" Tony asked randomly and neither got an answer from the god sitting on his couch, nor from the master archer perched on the back of a chair at the dining room table. "Guess not."

He pulled a package of nuts from the cabinet above the working surface; snacks had started to randomly appear on this floor, but he knew all about gift horses. Though he avoided the fruit cups. Unless it was blueberries. He had the sneaking suspicion that was Bruce's doing in trying to feed all of them a healthier diet.

"Where's your keeper?" Tony asked Loki, sitting down on the couch table a few feet away from him. That prevented him from seeing the screen, but it wasn't like Loki seemed to be interested in watching TV anyway. He kept his distance, although he didn't think Loki needed to be within reach to do anything to him. Still, it was a psychological advantage.

Loki raised his head along a disdainful eyebrow. "My brother has his duties. Especially now."

Because still no one could know Odin was dead and Loki had taken his place. Tony wondered what had been the plan here, if there even had been a plan. How long could he have kept up that guise, how long would he have wanted to? Forever? Tony couldn't imagine it.

Nodding, Tony reached for a tablet and tossed it to the god on his couch, who grabbed it out of the air easily. "Know what this is?"

With the raise of a disdainful eyebrow, Loki answered, "A primitive teaching device, we give it to children because they are almost unbreakable. I remember Thor needed these for a long time." With that he took the newest generation Stark Tab between both hands and broke it in two as if it was a dry twig. "Not in Midgard, I see."

Tony took a breath to say something but thought better of it. "Never mind. JARVIS, bring up the specs." A holographic presentation of the object Coulson had sent Clint to scope out appeared. The original was with SHIELD and they were unwilling to give it back, but the suit had scanned it automatically. "Have you seen this before?"

He watched closely as Loki deigned to inspect the hologram and then shook his head. "It's not of Asgard, we don't make our technology so … crude."

On the other side of the room, Clint rolled his eyes, but Tony wasn't deterred. "What of the Chitauri?"

"Not from what I have seen, but my brother could not prevent the convergence from happening. Anything might have come through. Where are the other two?"

A quick glance at Clint confirmed he had heard the same. "Two?"

"Two connecting interfaces." Loki stood and stepped up, then pointed at a featureless surface. His hand glittered with the projection. "It's connected to the energy source."

Before anyone could say something though, Thor entered the room with heavy steps. If Tony had been any further away from him, he wouldn't have seen Loki narrowing his eyes for a split second. Interesting.

"What's the matter Big Guy, has anyone found out about brother dearest?" 

Thor shook his head. "I went to see Jane."

Matters with Jane Foster hadn't ended well, and more than once Tony had wondered why Thor was still on Earth if not for her, because his common absences seemed to have been one of the facts that killed the relationship. But then, who said Thor had disclosed everything to them? On the other end of the room, Clint uncoiled from his position but didn't come over.

"She deserved to know about you," Thor told his brother. "That you are back."

"Was she suffering from the guilt of my death?" Loki asked dismissively, clearly not believing it himself.

Thor didn't rise to the bait. "Brother, she was there that day and you—"

"I died for her, you say? Yes, I suppose that is true."

Thor hadn't said a lot about what had happened in the other world short of the bare facts that culminated in Loki's death and Earth's salvation. Yet they all knew it hadn't passed him by unscathed and the same could obviously be said for his brother. Still, then tension was palpable and Tony thought maybe he'd missed something, considering Loki had _faked his own death_ and that's why they were at this point. More or less. Intricate details notwithstanding. 

Walking over to the couch his brother had only recently vacated, Thor shook his head. "Loki, if your only intention is to mock, stop it. Come over here and—"

That was the last words Tony heard; slowly but steadily he'd made his way backwards towards the elevator, thinking it prudent to leave the gods to work it out among themselves. Clint, the traitor, had already left the premise like a ninja and now it was upon Tony to look for an escape route.

Eventually he made his way down to the lab, but no one was there, components were rendering, JARVIS was testing a new improvement to the shielding technology he'd developed recently. Which meant Tony had time on his hands.

"JARVIS, any sign of Vegas Boy?" Tony asked and scanned the displays in his helmet. Barnes' continued and prolonged absences didn't make sense to him. Between Cap and their two resident spies, he'd expected the man to move base to the Tower before long. Tony had told Steve to not just respect Bucky's choice, but also accept it—and he'd do it again—but that didn't mean he entirely understood it. Whether it was his past as the Winter Soldier still haunting him, or something else entirely was just as much in the air. Plus, Steve's prowling and expectant airs pulled Tony out of his concentration, and right now he was busy. He needed to make the Tower safer, to not have something like their current situation happen again. Thor might have Loki under control, but who knew what the next thing would be?

After a long moment, JARVIS got back to him, "Sergeant Barnes last appears on surveillance footage in Brooklyn, Sir. Would you like the address?"

"Might as well," Tony answered. 

It turned out to be across from the building he had bought for him and he found the man himself on top of his own building, going through what looked like a complicated self-defense move. Then he spotted the kid he'd seen Bucky with before, who tried to emulate the sequence as well as possible. Interesting. He landed two roofs away and zoomed in on the training session, but from the flick of Barnes' eyes he knew the man had spotted him already. 

Tony had thought he had Barnes all figured out; longest serving prisoner of war, refusing to feel sorry for himself, pragmatic to the core, something he probably had to be as Steve Rogers' keeper. Barnes was the only one who didn't regard Loki with the same apprehension as the rest of them when he sat with him on the common floor. And apparently, when he was not at the Tower, he spent his time like this.

"Would you like me to look up the identity of the boy?" JARVIS asked.

"Yes, but don't tell me, send it home," Tony answered and watched as Barnes crouch down and explained something that looked like it had to do with angles. It also appeared the session was winding down though and Tony made the small hop to the roof. "You know that Natasha calls him your little apprentice?"

The boy's head snapped towards him and his mouth dropped open, Barnes rolled his eyes. "I caught Natasha teaching Sam how to get out of the thighs of doom, she really has no leg to stand on."

"Literally?" Tony quipped and did a little twirl because the suit still didn't project facial features. He'd need to work on that.

Between them the kid frowned and looked up at Barnes. "Is he really Iron Man?"

"As he lives and breathes," Barnes answered with a sigh. "Tony, did you need something?"

"Way to keep my super hero identity secret." Tony raised the face shield and frowned. 

Barnes crossed his arms over his chest. "The way I heard it, you announced that one in front of the assembled press."

A huff from the side made them both look down. "Adults," the kid said, annoyed in ways that only the pre-pubescent could achieve. Without another glance at either of them he left and let the door to the roof fall shut behind him, louder than strictly necessary. 

Wistfully Tony said, "He didn't even want an autograph."

"He'll be ecstatic if he gets one anyway." Then Barnes' smiling mask fell and he was all business. "What did you need?"

Tony gauged the man in front of him and again wondered about his actions. He'd thought he had Barnes all figured out, but now he thought maybe he was missing some of the key pieces that was buried somewhere in a HYDRA base. "So, you and Cap."

"None of your fucking business, Tony," Barnes told him and Tony shrugged.

"He's moping. In my lab. That sort of makes it my business. And then you spend all the time you are around with Loki."

Smirking, Barnes raised an eyebrow. "Jealous?"

Why was Tony getting involved in his housemates' lives at all? He should just lock the door to the lab and ignore everyone. Except maybe Bruce, because if Bruce got angry no one wanted to witness it and Natasha, because denying the Black Widow was a bad idea. The others though? He should simply ignore them.

He had just opened his mouth to answer when JARVIS said for both of them to hear, "Sir, a message was sent to the company server that you will want to see. Shall I alert Miss Potts?"

The mirth was gone from Barnes' face when Tony looked at him next and they nodded at each other. "No, wait until we're back. I need to know first."

He'd need to keep Pepper safe, the people who worked at the Tower. Whatever was coming—if indeed something was coming—he couldn't let it go too far again. That was his responsibility and something he couldn't leave to anyone else. When he met Barnes' gaze, something related to his sentiments was reflected in it.

"Do you want a ride?" Tony asked and gestured at the suit.

Shaking his head, Barnes briefly surveyed the rooftops. "No, I need to check on someone first. I'll find you." 

With those words he took off, jumped to the roof of the neighboring building, not waiting for an answer. Tony rolled his eyes and looked after him until he became a speck against the sky before lowering the face shield. He almost didn't want to know what had happened now, if running away had been an option… Minutes later he was back in Manhattan and landed on the platform outside his and Pepper's apartment, leaving the suit behind for now.

It wasn't Barnes waiting for him, but Pepper, Natasha, Maria Hill and an elderly woman he didn't know. For a moment he forgot about JARVIS' earlier warning. Instead he secretly feared for his life but still squared his shoulders. "Ladies," he greeted them, "may I inquire to what I owe the pleasure?"

"I invited them," Pepper told him and raised her cheek to be kissed. He snuck the kiss to the corner of her mouth and got a touch of lipstick for his troubles that he tried to wipe away discreetly. Shooting him a chiding glance, she nonetheless smiled. "Have you met Dorothy yet?" she asked, indicating the older woman with them. "She is a friend of James'."

Tony shot Dorothy a brief glance, saw the straight spine, the clearly mildly arthritic fingers, but the unmistakable stance of vigilance he was familiar with after years of watching all these secret agent men and spies in his life. Whatever she was, Dorothy was more than a friendly old grandma. He rested his hand on Pepper's back, his thumb making small circles in the base of her neck. Finally he answered, "Not so far, though I seem to have heard of you. I guess Robocop is on a fool's errand right now then."

There was no way Barnes knew heaps of people in the city, even after all these months. The new and improved James Barnes was a deeply private person, for good reasons, who played it close to the chest with a few selected people. In that circle were Steve first and foremost and Tony thought he might be counted in it as well, along with the other Avengers and possible even Loki these days, but also the boy Tony had met earlier, and apparently this woman who Natasha and Clint had mentioned before. Since the boy had been taken care of while they were still at the scene, that left Dorothy to check on.

At his words he received narrowed glances from all four women and took an involuntary step back. "You know, I came here to go to the lab. And that's where I will be, if anyone is looking for me."

By the time Barnes found him he'd listened to the message twice and had asked JARVIS to bring up diagrams he thought he would never look at again. Tony knew how everything worked that left SI manufacturing plants, so it was an academic exercise. For a few moments Barnes kept his eerie silence, then he said, "Looks like something they used to give me for missions."

Closing his eyes Tony let go of a pent-up breath and shook his head. "Figures. You found your friend?"

"I did tell her everyone at the Tower would be her instant fan," Barnes mused and then sobered. "What is it?"

For many more minutes, Tony studied the diagram of the automated rocket launcher; it had no excess weight, no unnecessary frills, it was a machine of perfection. Some parts of it Tony had modified for the weapons systems in the suit, the rest had been archived after they had stopped production. He heard Barnes step closer, his boots deliberately making sounds on the floor, as he studied the diagram, reached out the metal arm to touch the insubstantial play of light.

Eventually Tony said in what he hoped was a neutral tone, "You know they called me the Merchant of Death?"

"Have you been visited by the ghost of Christmas past?"

Tony shot him a quizzical glance and received two raised eyebrows in inquiry. "I sometimes forget you were smart before they made you into a mindless killing machine."

"I read," Barnes merely told him, not even pretending to take offense at his words. "Why are you looking at this?"

Debating whether to show the man or not was pointless and Tony knew this was something for the whole team. Still, maybe Banes had some insights to offer before this went to the common floor. Resigning himself to the past once more coming to haunt him Tony prompted, "JARVIS." 

He watched Barnes while the short message played, but his face was a mask of impassivity, the Winter Soldier roaring his head. When the words stopped he nodded at the console, and when he spoke it wasn't to address Tony. "Again." But the mask didn't budge and try as he might, Tony was still unable to read him. After that second round of the message being replayed, Barnes finally looked at him, and at least his eyes were not the empty pits that he imagined the Winter Soldier had carried through the world. "Who knows?"

"I only got it minutes before you arrived, so. Just you. I guess it's as bad as it sounds." 

Despite the potentially dire situation, Barnes snorted quietly and shook his head. "How sure are you?"

"Who can say?" Tony shrugged. "Ever since my sojourn to the beautiful Afghan countryside and my subsequent adventures I try to take terrorist threats seriously."

"And then you invite them to your home so it can get blown up?" A raised eyebrow answered him.

Tony knew he pulled a face, a frown paired with a lopsided smirk. "That might have been a lapse in judgment. I guess Bruce might have diagnosed me with something if he had the temperament to listen to me." He sobered. "I can never be sure. I thought you of all people would know to be better safe than sorry, having killed how many people?"

Barnes frowned at him. "Truthfully, aside from that last shebang HYDRA had planned, my targets were usually in the single digits at a time. And even then, I was supposed to kill Fury and Steve and SHIELD would collapse all by itself then. Probably not quite this literally though." He turned his head. "Call the others. I'll go talk to Steve. Also, much as it might bother Clint, we should probably include Loki, I think his input might be useful."

"Doubtlessly he will have something to say."

Smiling without humor, Barnes turned his head and shrugged. "At least it won't get boring." 

He then left and Tony turned back to the diagram, swiping across the display to make JARVIS play the message one more time. But before he could get that far, another voice came to his ear; more quiet, more menacing, far too familiar.

"Perhaps I can be of assistance," Loki all but whispered, too close for comfort. 

Tony slapped a hand to his ear and whipped around, but when he spotted their resident god of mischief he stood just inside the door to the workshop, a smirk on his face. Of course, he'd done it on purpose. Tony schooled his features into a scowl. "And since when are you the model of altruism? You _threw me out of a window_."

He was almost proud when his tone was hardly even accusatory. The key here was not to show any weakness in front of him, and if Tony was honest, deep down in his heart he was scared worse than the time Obadiah had ripped the arc reactor out of his chest. 

But Loki's expression also changed, turned from aloof and pretentious to something darker. "I do not like to be in anyone's debt. If you let me take care of this small matter, my assistance would settle the debt between us."

"The day I trust you—"

A sneer was back on Loki's face as he snapped, "Have it your way then," and vanished into thin air.

Could gods do that? Perhaps Loki could. Thor had never done it, but then Thor had his own ways to appear and disappear. 

It was only when he made a fist that Tony could hide the shaking of his hand even to himself and he gulped deep breaths. Terrorists, ancient gods, what would come next, the US government wanting to proposition him again? But then that was preferable, perhaps — perhaps even the terrorists were, if the alternative was Loki. Even if this Loki was not the Loki under the influence of the Chitauri… But Tony's heart didn't know that, was still going overtime.

"JARVIS—" Perhaps terrorists were the preferable alternative. He could deal with those. Had done so before. They just never learned. 

But it was not meant to be. "Sir," JARVIS said, "we seem to have a situation on Captain Rogers' floor."

"Christ what did they do now?"

But it was only moments later that Steve burst into the workshop, practically dragging Barnes inside — screaming in agony, face contorted with tears streaming down his face and hair plastered sweat damp against his scalp. "Tony!" Steve said, eyes wide with shock even as Tony started to clear a work surface. Not ideal, but the best they could do that wasn't the floor. "I don't know what happened, one moment we were talking and the next—"

Superhuman strength was probably what was needed to heave the almost dead weight that was James Barnes onto the bench, but Steve had it in spades.

"Shoulder," Barnes ground out and shifted under his own power to not lie on his cybernetic arm.

"JARVIS?" Tony prompted, but JARVIS was already pulling up schematics and running diagnostics. Something was very wrong. Tony shook his head. "Get me Bruce down here, and, "he hesitated a moment because he couldn't possibly say the words 'in case we need to do something drastic' without alarming Steve. Because Steve would be alarmed, reading too well what that could mean. Still Tony continued, "Natasha and Hill."

Both of them would do what needed doing. If it came to that.

Steve was stroking Barnes' hair out of the way, trying to shush him but it didn't work. "Is there nothing for the pain?"

Frantic and frowning, Tony shook his head, then shoved Steve aside and got into Barnes' face. "What did they use to put you under in the past? What works on you?" Because he knew Barnes hadn't gotten the super soldier serum, but he had gotten _something_ and his metabolism would simply burn through run of the mill analgesics. "Barnes! Focus, damn you!"

"'Ctricty," Barnes groaned and then something in Russian Tony didn't understand, before adding, "ket—" But his sentence was cut off by a spasm.

It was in that moment that Bruce, Natasha, Maria Hill and Barnes' friend Dorothy burst into the workshop and his workshop was not designed for so many people to be moving around.

Steve was trying to talk to him, but Tony ignored him in favor of the newcomers. "Something is wrong with the arm, we'll find out what as soon as we can do something about the pain. JARVIS!"

"Already on it, sir. Ketamine for immediate pain relief will be delivered to you shortly." The calm of JARVIS' voice eased his mind a little, at least.

Or at least enough so he could turn around to Steve and say, "Jesus I'm not going to electrocute him! And now get out of my way."

A drawer snapped open across the room, and it was Dorothy who took the syringe from it and marched towards them, found a vein in seconds and slid the needle in, then pressed the plunger. No disinfection, but Barnes probably didn't need it. The effect wasn't immediate, but not like Tony had expected, but it took less than a minute for Barnes to stop trying to trash off the table and be still. Dorothy reached up and closed his eyes that had rolled back into his head. 

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. 

"What happened?" Bruce asked into the sudden quiet.

"A relay connected to a nerve has come loose," JARVIS explained and highlighted the parts in question, biological material in green and the faulty relay in red. Tony recognized that they had been looking at this before and sighed deep inside. Wear and tear, after all, even for wonderboy. "It is no surprise Sergeant Barnes was in agony."

"I think we retired him a Colonel," Tony said as he inspected the schematic. "What can we do?"

"Sir, I would suggest more anesthesia, he will have metabolized the dose he was injected with shortly." Another drawer snapped open.

Wordlessly, Dorothy took the bag of clear solution from it and read the label before she affixed the drip with practiced motions, then pressed the bag into Steve's hand and directed him to hold it up. "Don't squeeze."

Steve made to open his mouth but she just sternly shook his head before she squeezed Barnes' flesh and blood hand. 

"We need to move him," Natasha said. "Whatever you do, this is not a hospital environment and while I guess we all have doctored people under worse circumstances…"

She was right. Still it took too long to get Barnes onto a gurney and to the hospital floor that Tony had added after the debacle that had been the battle of New York. Because one could never know. 

The whole time Steve followed them mutely, miracle that it was. It might have had something to do with Dorothy murmuring, "Captain, I understand but you won't be able to help him like this. Let us do our jobs." What had Barnes said, she had been any Army nurse? Tony believed it. 

Once they had Barnes wheeled into a room Bruce pulled Tony aside. Quietly he said, "I'm not that kind of doctor."

"Temperament?"

"Training, Tony."

For a moment he glanced over to where Steve was still fussing over Barnes, then he shook his head. "I don't think anyone is that kind of doctor. I don't think even HYDRA had that kind of doctor. They just used him as a guinea pig and now he's paying the price. The question is, can we make it worse? If worse comes to worst we'll take the arm off."

"He'll still suffer from neuropathy; his body would try to repair what isn't there." But Bruce sighed also. "If it doesn't work Steve will have to make a decision."

What Tony didn't say that, having gotten to know Barnes in these past months, he would make his own decision now that he had his mind back. But that didn't belong in this room now.

It took a long time to get the relay rendered. Barnes went through two bags of the ketamine drip, Steve stayed by his side the whole time. Natasha went to collect Barton and they went on patrol, saying that was the most useful thing they could do. Maria Hill kept an eye on Steve and Dorothy took the rest she could. She said she felt like she was back in service and that was what she had learned. 

Tony didn't tell them about the terrorists. What was the use to worry them further? He still had four days. Easy. Take care of Barnes first and then they could take care of the rest. 

The heart monitor beeped in comfortable regularity when they eventually wheeled Barnes into the operating room. Dorothy would be assisting, and she and Bruce would do the wet work. Tony… Tony would try his best from the mechanical side, but the biological component in Barnes' arm was a mystery to him. He'd trust Bruce with it. Had to. 

"Sir," JARVIS said as they ran through a last test, "Colonel Barnes metabolizes the ketamine quicker than before. I fear we can't administer as much as we'd need to unless we want to risk tipping the balance in both total blood volume as well as concentration."

Exchanging a glance with Bruce, Tony's eyes grew wide. "Crap. What can we do, add a pure alcohol drip? Would that keep him under?"

Before either Bruce or Dorothy could whack him and say what a bad idea that was a green shimmer appeared at Barnes' head and Loki materialized from thin air. "Allow me."

Even though Tony wanted to, and Bruce also wanted to but had to control the Hulk in his surprise, it was Dorothy who narrowed her eyes at Loki and said, "What is this to you?"

Loki then smiled at her, a genuine smile as few as Tony had ever seen on him, and placed his hands on both sides of Barnes' head, who lay face down on the table. "As I have iterated before, I do not like debts. And I owe one to this soldier. Go on. He will not wake. He will not feel pain as you work."

Shrugging after a moment's hesitation, Tony popped open the whole arm from shoulder to wrist and they could see the damage, which was more substantial than he would have expected from the schematics. Some of the malfunctioning relays had melted, and he wasn't surprised by in how much pain Barnes had been. The corrosion ate at everything and the nerve was badly damaged. Still Bruce dripped a liquid on it, then dimmed the lights and had JARVIS throw a different wavelength on.

"It's a toxin that will at least make the nerve tissue visible for us," he explained. "He should recover just fine from it if he can take the rest of this surgery." Should being the operative word, but no one pointed that out. And if not… Well, Barnes would have some decisions to make if they ever got him lucid again.

A microscope descended from the ceiling and they went to work. Tony and Dorothy spelled each other off on the other side, glancing through the oculars as was necessary to do their delicate work. 

The whole time, Loki said not a single work, though his hands never left Barnes. They were gentle, too, as far as Tony could tell. Now he was lucky they'd not had a theater setup here so no one could look into the room from above, even though Steve had wanted to. Steve had wanted to come in and be there, but all of them had forbidden it. Tony thanked his lucky stars.

***

When James woke he was on his stomach and his head felt stuffed with cotton, a large patch of heat sat in the middle of his back. Minus the heat it was like being back in Zola's laboratory. "James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038," he began murmuring, his mouth dry and his tongue feeling swollen. His voice was little more than a whisper as he repeated, "James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038."

"You're a colonel now," someone said quietly and it took James far too long to recognize Tony. "And you're not in the Army any longer." The patch of heat was Tony's heavy hand and it felt too good for James to move away from it as he might have otherwise. He'd never wanted Tony to touch him, had been too worried what he might do, but all his muscles felt liquidy and he didn't think he could have hurt anything in this condition, so he just moved his head and caught Tony's eye. 

A straw was held in front of him and he drank the water gratefully. Tony looked tired and drawn, but that wasn't anything unusual. Considering James knew how much — or how little indeed — Tony slept that shouldn't surprise him. 

"Do you want Steve?" Tony asked. "You were raving for a while after Loki released you from his spell that you didn't want to see him, so that's why you get me. He's outside. And he can't hear us."

If James had had the strength he would have sighed and shaken his head; as it was he merely closed his eyes. The soundproofing was for his benefit no doubt, yet he wondered why Tony had built it into the facility in the first place. Super soldier sex could hardly have been in the designs. Then something else filtered through to him and with a croak he asked, "Loki?"

"You were burning through the ketamine in no time flat, and to be frank with you, I don't think we could have done it without overdosing you to the point of no return. Loki … offered his assistance. And I'm not sure why." Probably because Loki and James had far more in common than either of them cared to admit. He opened his eyes again and Tony was still looking at him, unusually calm; he must be as exhausted as James. Tony shrugged, stroked his hand up James' back to trace the spot where metal met flesh before resting it just short of the edge again. "Wear and tear. Unless you want to go back to cryo, you need to do something about it. I can offer my assistance."

"How generous of you," James whispered and earned himself a smile.

"That's all me, generosity impersonate." It was self-deprecating, but James knew better. "That's why I finance this whole operation, and also Steve's Princess Bride journey, even though he doesn't know I did. Because let's face it, in this scenario Steve totally sees himself as Westley and you're Buttercup." The reference went over James' head and he stayed silent. He didn't want to talk about Steve now. But he also should have known Tony better by now, for his next question was, "Is that why you don't want to join us?"

"Tony—"

"It is my business, you know." At least he didn't say it was because Steve was part of his team or some shit like that. 

The fog in his head had cleared a little and James flexed the fingers of his flesh and blood hand. "How long?"

For a moment there was silence, and then, "A day. I gave your friend Dorothy a room since I didn't think I should send her home. Considering."

Considering they were facing a potential catastrophe. "Did you tell the others?"

With a shake of his head, Tony moved his hand again, tiny strokes of his thumb that might be a nervous tick or a comfort. "With you in this state we don't need more to worry about. I'll fix it. Somehow. Loki offered to fix it. Which I know is ridiculous."

Or maybe it wasn't, but James wouldn't say that yet. For a moment he remained quiet, but he'd tackle the issue of Loki when he was more awake. Perhaps more healed up, if the fog was already clearing it shouldn't take long. The healing factor in his blood… Well, something would come to pass. And if not then he was a useless hybrid of meat and technology anyway.

To Tony he said, "Your father was a very different man, Tony."

"Yeah, I know. Even from the grave he's still taking me to school over that." And James figured he really didn't want to know about that. He had enough troubles himself, he didn't need the weight of Anthony Stark's psyche resting on him as well. But Tony's next question spoke of curiosity regardless, "Why? What brought this on?"

"Your father wouldn't have stood for it either. He would have fixed it." James rolled his flesh and blood shoulder, then flexed the other one and only felt a twinge. But Tony caught the drift and helped him sit. His cybernetic arm rested useless in his lap. "But his first instinct wouldn't have been to do it himself. Just as his first instinct was never to experiment on himself, he needed others for that. And whatever I might think of that is probably irrelevant, but you're a different man, Tony. I knew your father. And even though he knew me as well, if he'd gotten hold of me he would have put me to use or decommissioned me." Peggy Carter would have, too, but that was because to afford him compassion would have compromised her, but he didn't say that. She was still alive and Howard wasn't, after all. "It never crossed your mind."

For a long moment Tony sat wordless, and James should probably have been pleased with himself that he had managed to render Tony of all people speechless, but he was too busy trying to get feeling back into his arm. It wasn't quite working. 

"Is this about Steve?" 

It was a bitter laugh that bubbled up in James at that surprised him. "Steve thinks I've slipped the Winter Soldier's skin and left it behind, that I'm the man he used to know. I don't think I've been that person since before he found me in that lab, mumbling name, rank and serial number. I don't think it was just the war."

Anyone in the tower who wasn't in the same denial Steve was knew that he couldn't leave the Asset behind. Even Loki knew it. 

Pursing his lips, Tony rested a hand lightly on his metal shoulder, a fact James could only tell because he saw it. Eventually Tony got up and walked to the door, but before he pressed it open he said, "Thank you, Barnes."

James was too tired to acknowledge it and he should probably not have been surprised when Steve stormed into the room right after Tony had vacated it and pulled him into his arms. That was how James found his face smashed against Steve's chest and Steve's lips against his hair and he was too exhausted to make sense of Steve's babble. He did bring his working arm around his friend, though, and simply let himself hold on. 

The next time James woke up his left shoulder twinged and Steve was next to him, watching him. For long minutes he simply looked back. This was Steve, and Steve was also not the same person he had been before the war, although he was changed in different ways. 

Now Steve reached out and rested his hand on James' chest, leaned in to brush his lips over his forehead. "Are you not afraid?"

Ah, confession time, then. It was intentional when James raised his left hand, the cybernetic hand — pleased that it was working again and that he wasn't in pain — and curled his fingers into Steve's. "I'm afraid all the fucking time. For you, for Dorothy, for Charles—"

"Well, I'm afraid for you," Steve stated calmly. A handful of words, simple words really. James knew he should have anticipated them, perhaps, but they had remained unspoken between them at the front, iterated only in deeds when neither of them could sleep due to sudden bouts of insomnia or shelling fire. In James watching Steve's six and Steve making sure he was the van and wouldn't let anyone waltz through him. And still they were just as unspoken as the next words Steve said, in the steady voice that might as well have laid down a battle tactic, the insecurity only evident in the way the sentence remained unfinished, "I love you, so…"

Quickly, before he could think better if it, James turned and caught Steve's mouth with his; he reached out with his right and cupped Steve's jaw, then slid his fingers to the back of his neck to hold him in place. Eyes closed, Steve kissed back and James knew it couldn't always be this easy. But for now, it was and he opened his eyes again when the kiss ended. Roughly he said, "It has never been a question whether I love you. Ever."

Lips twitching, Steve kissed his cheek and drew him in. "And yet…" he murmured into his ear. "What difference does it make if I sleep in your bed five nights or seven?"

James tightened his hand in Steve's hair. "When has a happy end ever worked in our lives? Those are stories, Steve. I need…" He sighed, Steve's scent in his nose, and he scooted closer so their bodies were slotted together even closer. "I'm not leaving you."

"I know, but I—" But James kissed him quiet. They would have the same argument again, no doubt, yet perhaps not when the status quo they had come to know, and James all too briefly, was perhaps about to collapse again.

When he drew back he looked Steve in the eye and could tell he knew the spell was broken. "Has Tony left already?"

"What? No." Steve frowned, muscles growing tense. "Where is he supposed to go? I know Loki went to him, but—"

James was already pushing himself up, but then leaned down to press another kiss into Steve's mouth. "Come on. Convalescence is over."

***

One and a half days, and he was no closer to a solution than he had been. Loki was … not an option and Tony didn't even entertain the offer. If it even had been genuine.

Which he doubted.

Instead Tony stared at the transcribed message so he didn't have to listen to the grating voice. JARVIS had analyzed it all, intonation and background noise, possible points of origin, word choice, accents; but there was nothing at all. Nothing but the threat to blow the major metropolitan centers of the world to kingdom come unless Tony — or more precisely SI — delivered.

And Tony couldn't — wouldn't — give them the satisfaction of that. Besides, who guaranteed him that the end results wouldn't be the same?

Barnes picked that moment to saunter into the workshop as if he hadn't lain on one of these benches in absolute agony just yesterday. Fucking super soldiers and their twice damned healing factor. 

"Back in fighting shape?" Tony asked with a sardonic smirk on his lips. "Or has Steve worn you out already?"

"Look here Tony—" Steve started, but Barnes just rolled his eyes and stilled him with a hand on his chest. 

Interesting.

"Once I get some food I will be fine," Barned said to Tony, then his eyes went harder. "Tell him."

"What makes you think you can compel me?"

Barnes merely sighed. "Tony has received a threat, which we both think is credible. Someone is threatening to wipe out all major cities globally with an alien device unless Tony delivers all SI weapons still in existence to them. In…two days?"

"One and a half," Tony said and hoped his voice was sufficiently defiant. "You've been asleep."

"Forgive my body's need to heal." It was an almost lazy drawl before the voice turned sharp again. "Apparently Loki offered his help, which Tony has refused."

Under different circumstances, the way Steve had become a pillar of stone would have been amusing, but Tony knew him well enough to see the rising fury in him. Eventually he bellowed, "And you haven't _told_ us?"

"What would have been the use?"

"Tony, I can't believe you!" Steve came to stand towards him and narrowed his eyes. Posturing, this one. "No wait, I can. This one I can. I'm getting the team, and then you will _tell us everything_." He turned to Barnes. "You coming?"

But Barnes shook his head and, very deliberately, sat on the stool he usually used. Steve growled and stomped off. 

"Thanks for nothing," Tony murmured. "Wait if I ever sit at your sickbed again." The only answer he received for a moment was a small smile, then Barnes reached out and picked up some parts that had previously been part of the arc reactor in Tony's chest. "You know, that's a magnet, it could stick permanently to your arm."

Frowning down at the coil in his hands, Barnes ran his flesh and blood thumb over the wire. "I'm pretty sure it needs electricity for that."

Sometimes Tony forgot what a good grasp both Steve and Barnes had on things most people considered to be modern, but in the end, most of what made society run on a daily basis were machines and machines had been around before either of those two had been born. Even weapons were nothing but machines, Tony knew that better than anyone, and the only modification time had achieved was miniaturizing them. 

"You're not too far off; it needs a core. Did Steve break something in the arm or to what do I owe your continued attention?"

Barnes raised an eyebrow when he looked up, thumb still running over the coils. "Wouldn't you want to know. I'm not here for Steve. I'm not doing this for Steve."

"No? Could have fooled me." But there was no point in getting worked up over it, and he silently sent the message and the transcription to one of the larger rooms on the common floor. They'd need to head there soon. "Then why are you here?"

Over the past seventy years, Bucky Barnes had been an assassin for causes not his own, that had been evident from the start and even more so from the paperwork Pepper had gathered on him. The only people he'd been in contact with were targets or handlers, technicians and researchers that had sold their souls for a dubious claim to fame. Tony had been fooled by the brave front, interrupted only by glimpses of mayhem beneath, but underneath broiled a strong will and something else. He wasn't sure if he would label it fear, but for the first time in a long while Barnes was driven by his own agenda. Tony could accept that, if nothing else.

After a long moment Barnes looked up. "There's a price to pay, isn't there?"

Among the myriad of possibilities that carried a cost, none stood out to Tony that would be obvious now. "What do you mean?"

"Living," Barnes said and set the coil down. "Being alive again."

"There's no debt between us, Barnes." For a moment Tony was serious and then he smirked. "I take my payment in kind with access to the arm."

Rolling his eyes, it was clear that Barnes didn't consider that sufficient but that he'd let the matter rest. For now. In silent agreement they made their way to the common floor to brief everyone on the threat to the world as they knew it. Again.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So. Basically only the climax is missing, yes? How our dear characters would have ended up:
> 
> James: Would still not have moved into the Tower, but indeed would spend more days there than not. He'd still maintain his own base on his own terms (though certainly not permanently in hotel rooms), but still become a part of the team. At least until the move upstate, but who knows if this would have happened in this alternate universe.
> 
> Steve: In the course/at the end of the "let's recover the alien artifacts" mission would have realized that he can't force Bucky and taken what he was offered, which was already more than he could have had otherwise. Would never have become very warm with Loki but would have grudgingly accepted his help.
> 
> Loki: Would have been instrumental in recovering the artifacts that he and Thor would then have brought to Asgard's vault. While I'm not sure this would have redeemed Loki in anyone's eyes but Thor's, I'm pretty sure that's not what Loki wanted anyway. I'm not sure whether Loki would have returned to the Throne as Odin or whether he and Thor would have worked something out. Time share ruling Asgard? Maybe!
> 
> Thor: Would have begun to spend more time in Asgard now that he's not, after all, the only member of his family that's left. Also because he probably still powers Loki's glamor in some way.
> 
> Tony: Really needs some therapy, but I like to imagine he would have realized that at some point. Or alternately found a way to cope that wasn't so hypervigilant and insane.
> 
> Charles: Would have received the Maria Stark Foundation scholarship. Maybe he would have met Harvey!
> 
> Dorothy: Would have become a regular fixture in Stark/Avengers Tower.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed despite its unfinished state!


End file.
